FAQ

Personal injury law can be defined as follows: “Physical injury inflicted on a person’s body, as opposed to damage to property or reputation.”

Accidents resulting in serious bodily injury happen often due to the negligence of others. Be it a business owner or a healthcare professional, their negligent behavior can result in a direct risk to your safety (and at times even your life). Personal injury cases can become “formal lawsuits” when legal counsel is retained, and civil court proceedings determine the opposing party is legally at-fault through a judgement made against them or, more commonly, a legal dispute that is resolved through a settlement. A settlement would occur before any lawsuit is filed and is preferable in many cases.

Crime documentaries presented in various formats (news, tv series–fiction or non–and most recently on Netflix) always present witnesses during “depositions”. It’s often hard for those unfamiliar with the practice of law, or who have not taken part in litigation themselves to fully understand the difference between mediation, litigation, and deposition.

A great deal of lawyers will offer potential clients a free case evaluation or free consultation to get a better picture of the legal issue at hand. An initial consultation, it should be noted, doesn’t qualify an attorney-client relationship. In fact, there are instances where a lawyer will offer his or her time free of charge for a case evaluation and then decide not to take on the case after all. This line of decision-making has nothing to do with “liking” the potential client, even if the client feels they’re being “turned away”; that’s simply not the case (every attorney wants to be able to help as many clients as possible seek justice).

If there’s a level of trust instilled between attorney and client, the attorney knows what he or she needs to do and has an entire team (legal assistants, paralegals, and seasoned associates) to get the job done. A client won’t need to call or text an attorney they trust multiple times a day, just to “check in” and “see how it’s going” if they’ve researched their chosen law firm, it’s reputable, and they’ve handled similar cases.

Personal Injury lawyers litigate every kind of accident claim including but not limited to: car accidents, slip and fall accidents, elder abuse, nursing home abuse and neglect, trucking accidents, motorcycle accidents, burn accidents, work-related accidents, traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, medical malpractice, medical misdiagnosis, malpractice insurance claims, surgical errors, drowning accidents, boating accidents, cruise line accidents, hotel and travel liability accidents, sexual assaults, negligent security, and wrongful deaths. It’s important to seek the advice of an experienced attorney in the event you become injured to fully understand what may entitle you to compensation.

In Does Loss of Limb Have to Mean Loss of Quality of Life? we’ll provide in-depth Personal Injury insight on what happens after a victim suffers an amputation, either as the result of a work-related accident or a surgical error that left them bodily injured. This insight is firsthand information from a board certified civil trial attorney who has tried and won numerous amputation-related lawsuits and recovered millions of dollars in damages on behalf of his clients.

One injury that’s not discussed frequently, but causes a great deal of pain for accident victims, is what’s known as a herniated disc. Within this Shaked Law Blog article we’ll provide the information you  need to fully understand the painful reality of this type of injury and the lengths an accident victim may have to go to achieve pain relief.

Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyers began their careers as entry level associates with goals of becoming senior partners from the day they were accepted to law school. That’s because Board Certified doesn’t come with the law degree. Board Certified comes from extra hours put in and attention to detail and the determination to achieve the best for each and every client. The Board Certified difference is that while there are many Personal Injury law firms out there, not all of them see clients as more than a case number. A Board Certified Civil Trial lawyer will take fewer cases and put more effort into each one, instead of trying to run a factory of hundreds of cases just to get clients out the door with compensation–but not as much as they may have truly deserved.

Actually becoming a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer doesn’t happen overnight. The step-by-step process to this distinction was discussed further in Hiring an Attorney 101: The Importance of “Board Certified”.

Personal Injury attorneys see hundreds, if not thousands, of life-changing accidents over the course of their career. A Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer who has the same compassion for the construction worker who lost his leg and the mother who lost her child in the swimming pool ten years into their career as they did the first time they were retained for similar cases is the kind of attorney victims should have on their side.

Crime documentaries presented in various formats (news, tv series–fiction or non–and most recently on Netflix) always present witnesses during “depositions”. It’s often hard for those unfamiliar with the practice of law, or who have not taken part in litigation themselves to fully understand the difference between mediation, litigation, and deposition.

Class Action was created to simplify a lawsuit when there are multiple “plaintiffs” as opposed to a single plaintiff in the standard Personal Injury lawsuit. The group of plaintiffs named in a Class Action lawsuit are commonly known as a “class” and all of them must allege the same thing: the defendant(s) were the cause of irreparable harm caused to them or their loved ones.

At the point in which a defendant or defendants settle the Class Action case or they’re found to have violated law and lose at trial, every member of the “class” who sustained injury due to the negligence of the defendant(s) is given a set percent of the damages to be distributed. These damages are decided by a judge and reflect the same considerations made in smaller, single-person Personal Injury lawsuits.