10 Tips on Finding the Right Lawyer

It’s not easy to find the right lawyer for your case. After all, it’s not like Los Angeles has a shortage of lawyers available. You can find all different kinds of lawyers in this area. However, you may not be able to find ones that are right for you and your case. Choosing the wrong lawyer can make it that much more difficult (if not impossible) to get the compensation you deserve.  In this blog, we’ll go over ten points that you may want to keep in mind when you’re looking for a lawyer for your case.

Find a lawyer who treats you like a person.

That may sound basic, but it’s less common than you might think. Too many attorneys see their clients as simply a paycheck to be cashed. At our firm, we make it a point to sit down with our clients and get to know them as people.

A proven track record.

This city is practically filled with law firms who say they “have a track record of success.” Ask them to show you this track record, and you’ll get a lot of throat-clearing, hand-waving and obfuscation. At Meliora, our track record of success speaks for itself.

Lawyers with experience in what you need

The best car accident attorneys in the world may not be able to help you if you have a repetitive stress injury. This is why you want to go to a firm that has lawyers who have won cases involving what you’re looking for. Sometimes, a law firm will say that they take something like “fatal workplace injury cases,” and then shuffle you off to their workers compensation attorneys. You deserve to have an attorney with clear, demonstrable experience in cases like yours.

Find lawyers with courtroom experience

If you go with a law firm that never goes to a courtroom or rarely ever does, then the other side may not take them seriously in negotiations. As they know that your law firm won’t go to courtroom, they’ll feel comfortable in simply waiting them out. If the case does go to a courtroom, they know your attorneys lack the experience to win.

By that same token, find attorneys that know how to negotiate

If your law firm’s cases all go to a courtroom, that’s a red flag, too. A majority of cases involving injuries should be settled. You want attorneys that will fight for your interests at the negotiating table as well as the courtroom, should it come to that.

Free consultations, paid on contingency in injury cases, etc.

At this point, these are essentially the least a law firm can do, but it’s still important to make sure they offer these. Initial consultations should be free, and cases involving injuries should be paid on contingency. That’s the least a law firm can do for you.

Check Reputations

Yelp, social media, Google ratings – all of these exist for a reason. Obviously, nothing is as good as their best review or as bad as their worst, but a quick perusal of each of these can help to give you a pretty clear idea as to the caliber of work that the law firm can do. If you see quite a few good to great reviews, that tells you quite a bit. If you see many bad reviews, that tells you a lot, too. This is your case and your life, so you want to be as diligent as possible when making a decision.  You can even ask some firms for references, too.

Find out how you’ll be informed of developments in your case

This is more important than most people realize. There are too many law firms that will simply take the first offer from the other side and then tell their client: “well, it’s the best we could do.” You want a law firm that believes it’s important to keep their clients in the loop, if the clients want to be kept in the loop. So, check in on how a law firm keeps their clients informed. You can even ask about this during an initial phone call if you can’t find information about it online.

Check out all of their qualifications

The law firm you choose should have all of the proper certifications, qualifications, licensing and insurance for their work. Any one that lacks these is one that’s best avoided.

Trust your instincts

Maybe you haven’t hired an attorney before, but you’ve certainly met professional people. Listen carefully during a phone call. Is the lawyer someone you can trust? Are they giving you the run around? You may even want to take a tour of their office. If it doesn’t look great, that can speak volumes.

As you might imagine, here at the Meliora Law Firm, we meet all of the above criteria and more. When you contact us, we can set up an initial consultation. There, we’ll sit down with you and go over your case in great detail. Once we’ve gotten to know you as a person, we’ll figure out how we can best help you. For more information, give us a call at (877) 724-0515.