5 Tips to Find a Personal Injury Attorney in Colorado

The Colorado personal injury market is jam-packed! Just flip on the television or radio and half the ads you see and hear are from attorneys who want to handle your case. It can be difficult to determine which attorneys are truly talented and passionate about helping car accident victims and which ones just want to churn cases and make fast money.

Since all of the attorneys say they care, how can you know which ones will give you the best representation? As you might imagine, you need to find a injury attorney in Denver who balances a personal passion for justice with significant experience in Colorado personal injury law.

How can you find this needle in the haystack? Below, I share what I consider to be the top 5 things you should expect when finding a personal injury attorney. Under each section, I’ve listed a few questions that you can ask prospective attorneys to determine if they will truly have your best interests at heart.

Read on!

Your Attorney Should Possess Expert Knowledge of Colorado Laws

Even if your favorite uncle is a personal injury attorney in Florida, you should not ask him to handle your case here in Colorado. He can definitely provide valuable advice, but you still need someone who possesses deep insights and experience in Colorado’s complicated personal injury laws. Not only do the laws in our at-fault state require that you, the victim, prove that the other driver caused the accident, but there are also very strict ways to manage each case so that the victim doesn’t lose out on other opportunities for compensation.

For example, the Colorado Make-Whole Law assures that, if you can prove that you have received all of the insurance money from the at-fault driver and from your own insurance coverage, and you still face huge medical bills, the health insurance company can be forced to drop all of its claims against you. Your medical bills go to zero. But your case must be managed perfectly from the beginning, including specific paper trails, to enable you to make this claim.

Questions you can ask prospective attorneys:

• Are you admitted to practice in Colorado courts?
• How long have you been practicing personal injury law in Colorado?
• How do you stay on top of trends in Colorado personal injury law?
• How do you stay on top of trends in the insurance industry?

Your Attorney Should Talk to You Personally and Handle Every Aspect of Your Case

From the very first time you call a personal injury attorney to talk about your case, you should feel heard. You should feel like the attorney has 100% of his or her attention on you and your needs. (If you feel like no one is listening to you in the beginning of the relationship, imagine how you’ll feel after a few weeks!)

Additionally, you should specifically ask if the attorney will handle your case personally or if paralegals will be tasked with the daily work. Usually, very big firms (like the ones you see most often on television) have fewer attorneys than paralegals and the paralegals do the lion’s share of the work on each case. This is bad for you because these cases typically settle before anyone fully understands whether all of the potential resources of compensation have been identified. Please read this article for more information about what I call “personal injury mills.”

Questions you can ask prospective attorneys:

• Will you speak to me when I call or commit to returning my calls personally within 12 to 24 hours?
• How many cases are you personally handling right now? (Compare this number to the other attorneys you call. The small, boutique firms typically handle far fewer cases and their cases settle for more.)

Your Personal Injury Attorney Should Work on Contingency

You should pay absolutely nothing to your Denver personal injury attorney until your case is settled. If your case ends without a settlement or compensation of any kind, the attorney should eat all of those costs. Basically, if your attorney doesn’t secure compensation for you, then he or she should not be compensated.

When your case is settled or the jury has delivered its decision, your attorney will take a percentage from that final number, including costs to handle your case. To read more about contingency fees, click here.

Questions you can ask prospective attorneys:

• How much will this cost me prior to the case’s conclusion? (The answer should be “zero.”)
• What is your contingency fee?
• What additional costs do you anticipate my case might require?

Your Attorney Should Look for Multiple Sources of Insurance Coverage

Beware the attorney who looks at the other driver’s auto insurance card and declares, “I know exactly how much I can get you.” That is lazy! And it probably means he or she is willing to ignore multiple sources of compensation that could be accessed on your behalf.

Here’s an example of what I mean: We recently handled a tragic case for a woman whose husband died in a motorcycle accident. She had been riding on the back of the bike but survived. The wife hired me to help her secure funds for her own medical bills. I drove to the scene of the accident in Northern Colorado and interviewed witnesses at a nearby restaurant. Based on their testimony, I was able to secure the full policy limits from the at-fault driver’s insurance company. However, it still wasn’t nearly enough to cover her medical expenses.

So, I began looking into the wife’s own insurance coverage and discovered that she and her husband had multiple vehicles with separate policies on each of them and that the wife should have coverage from her own insurance policies for her medical care! But her own insurance company tried to hide the coverage that was available to her! I fought hard for a long time and we finally secured a total of $900,000 for her. Additionally, I was able to reduce her medical bills to $0 under the Colorado Make-Whole Law.

I’m absolutely certain that there are many, many attorneys out there who would have stopped after getting policy limits from the other driver, not even inquiring into the wife’s own insurance policies.

Questions you can ask prospective attorneys:

• Where will you seek insurance coverage for my case? (Make sure they mention your own insurance, not just the other driver’s insurance.)

Your Attorney Should Be Willing to Go to Court

There are plenty of attorneys who hate going to court. Why? Because it is time-consuming and expensive. This is when you need to be sure that your attorney is passionate about justice because only someone who believes in the basic principle of “justice for all” should handle a case that goes to trial. You want your attorney to be not only willing, but passionate, about going to court on your behalf. Ideally, your case will never require a trial, but if it does, be sure that your attorney can and will go all the way.

Questions you can ask prospective attorneys:

• Why are you a personal injury attorney? (Did he/she mention a personal passion?)
• Approximately how many cases have you handled in your career?
• What percentage of those have gone to trial? (Big red flag if this percentage is very low because the attorney probably rushes to settle, which is cheaper for him in the long-run.)
• What were the results of your cases?

If you have any questions about this article, please don’t hesitate to contact an experienced lawyer at 303-388-5304.

Related articles:

Top 5 Reasons to Use Your Insurance After an Accident – Even if it wasn’t your fault? Yes! Keep reading…

Colorado’s Make-Whole Law – There is no pot of gold. It’s all about insurance coverage.