Choosing a personal injury law firm means understanding who will handle your case and how involved your attorney will be throughout the process. In this video, the attorney explains how his boutique firm handles cases from the initial claim through settlement negotiations and, when necessary, litigation and trial.
He also discusses the value of direct attorney involvement and how his 50 years of experience dealing with insurance companies informs his approach. From communicating with physicians to pursuing a claim in court, he describes what clients can expect when working with his firm.
Transcript
Well, I think what makes my firm different from other law firms is that we are a boutique firm, and of course, I am the head of the firm. We handle all of our own cases. In other words, we take our cases in, we take them through the stage of injury recovery with the client, we communicate with the physicians, we prepare a demand package after the client has completed treatment, and we attempt to negotiate a settlement with the insurance carrier.
If we’re unsuccessful, we also take the case into litigation and prosecute the case all the way through litigation, through trial. And by the way, that’s done by me. I handle the negotiations with the insurance company. I also handle the litigation of the case. I also try the case.
So the difference between our firm and a lot of the firms that you see locally on billboards is that we don’t have case managers that are not attorneys that try to negotiate claims. I negotiate the claims. So I’m a 50-year lawyer, and I’ve dealt with insurance carriers for all that time. The client receives the benefit of all that experience in dealing with insurance companies.
And also, because I’ve established a reputation with insurance companies, they know I’m aggressive and I’ll pursue the claim. So it makes it easier, I think, to negotiate a fair settlement for the client prior to litigation, if that’s possible. But quite obviously, if the insurance carrier doesn’t want to pay the claim, or they have reasons why they are not interested in paying the claim, it’s my job as the attorney for my client to take the case all the way through the system. And of course, I’ve done that many, many times.
The thing you have to avoid is relying upon things like advertisements, billboards, television ads, radio ads, because quite frankly, the attorneys that place those ads generally have little or no involvement with their clients or their cases. They are businessmen, and they have people working on the files, whether they be case managers. If the case goes into litigation, there may be an associate attorney assigned to the case.
Or even worse, they basically take cases in, and if they can’t settle them with the insurance company, they refer the cases out to attorneys that the client may not even know.
Well, the difference with the Galler Law Firm is that when they come to see us, we take them from the beginning of the claim to the end of the claim, and they don’t go elsewhere.
