Negotiating a Personal Injury Settlement

In most cases, your first recourse in fixing compensation for injuries sustained in any type of personal injury accident is to make an insurance claim. However, the insurance company may not immediately offer a fair amount for compensation or not even adequate for your needs. Therefore, you will have to negotiate.

Simply, hiring a personal injury attorney to represent you in all your interactions with the insurance company will put you in a stronger negotiating position. Insurance managers will be more likely to take your initial numbers seriously and less likely to try to drastically devalue your claim. However, even with an attorney on your side, you should still expect to go through a negotiation process, possibly including multiple offers and counteroffers. How to negotiate personal injury settlement without an attorney? The answer is Self-Representation.

What Is Self-Representation?

It is for those who want to negotiate personal injury settlement without attorney. The right to self-representation is the right that people have to represent themselves in a legal process, either in court or before an administrative agency. It exists in both civil and criminal cases. In civil lawsuits, this right is even more important because in this type of case the parties do not have the right to be assigned a lawyer by the State. It is important to clarify that the right to representation in its own right does not extend to the representation of another person. How to negotiate personal injury settlement?

Almost any type of accident can lead to injuries that lead to a personal injury claim, from a car accident (these are the most common) to a slip or construction incident.

And not just accidents – other types of third party negligence can lead to life-changing injuries forever. For example, the negligence of a doctor in the diagnosis and treatment of a disease can have serious consequences in the future and significantly damage your lifestyle.

Now, just being injured in an accident is not enough to start a personal negotiating insurance settlement personal injury. Before taking any legal action, ask yourself these questions:

Only very serious injuries are considered by the courts, generally any injury that involves a broken bone or a long time of disability and recovery can be considered by the courts in an injury lawsuit. This is why most of us go for a settlement.

After deciding that your injury is serious, you must find out who was at fault for your injuries (because there must be a victim and a culprit in a lawsuit). If you hit another car but it was you who caused the accident (you were driving drunk or ran a red light) then you most likely will not be able to file a personal injury lawsuit.

The fault of an accident can be shared between the parties involved (and the percentage of compensation will be proportional to the percentage of fault of each party).

If the case is not settled in an agreement with the insurance company, a court will decide how much fault is so much of it and the compensation will be proportional. Here are personal injury settlement negotiation tips.

Do You Have Evidence That Someone Else Was At Fault?

If you answered yes to the two questions above, it is time for you to assess whether you have evidence to prove the guilt of the person or business you are considering suing. Were there witnesses to the accident? Were your injuries evaluated by medical personnel immediately after they occurred? Are there security camera videos? Is there a police report on the incident? The more proof you have, the easier it will be to prove to a jury that the negligent party was at fault for your injuries and therefore deserves compensation.