If you are injured in a workplace accident due to an employer’s negligence, you can file a personal injury claim. First, however, you need to hire a Houston personal injury attorney to prove the employer’s fault and get desired compensation.
Houston, a metropolitan city in Texas, has around 260,347 establishments. OSHA rules state employers are required to ensure the safety of workers, and they should implement and adopt safety measures to prevent an accident. Therefore, hiring a good lawyer is crucial to winning the case. Here are six questions you should ask a lawyer while hiring.
1. What are Your Fees?
Personal injury lawyers follow no standard fee model, and the fees can vary significantly. Before hiring a lawyer, you need to ensure the fees are affordable. You need to ask the lawyer about the fees and other costs related to a personal injury claim. Higher fees do not mean the best lawyer, so don’t fall into that trap.
2. How Much Compensation Can be Expected?
Some lawyers give false assurances to people about medical compensation. You should not fall prey to such fall for such assurances. Instead, make sure the lawyer is talking sensibly about the compensation.
For example, Texas limits how much you can win in a medical malpractice case. The state has placed a cap of $250,000 from each healthcare provider if you win the case.
3. If You Lose the Case, Who Will Be Responsible for the Costs?
Houston lawyers offer a contingency fee option where you do not have to pay any fee to the lawyer. The contingency fee agreement mentions the percentage of compensation that the lawyer will take as fees. In the contingency fee model, the lawyer shares the compensation amount.
Most lawyers take around 25%, while some take 40% of the compensation amount. Unfortunately, Texas has no rules regarding the upper limit of contingency fees, so you should get a clear answer about contingency fees before hiring a lawyer.
4. Have You Won Any Personal Injury Cases Before?
Several kinds of personal injury lawsuits include motor accidents, workplace accidents, medical malpractice, property liability, and product liability. If you are a medical malpractice victim, make sure you select a Houston personal injury attorney who specializes in personal injury cases in the medical malpractice category.
5. How Long Do You Have to Wait for the Result?
Texas has one of the busiest court systems. As per the news report, Houston courts have a backlog of thousands of cases. Therefore, you should ask the lawyer how long you have to wait for the case result. The lawyer will give you a rough idea about the time for a final decision on the case. Here are some estimates for different cases.
- Road accident claims: 4 to 9 months
- Work accident claims: 6 to 9 months
- Medical negligence claims: 12 to 36 months
- Property liability claims: 6 to 9 months
6. How Much Time Will You Devote in the Case?
Though Texas follows “at fault” insurance laws, winning compensation is not easy as it seems, and the lawyer needs to devote sufficient time to build and strengthen your case. If the lawyer has a caseload, he might not be able to devote sufficient time and attention to the case.
It decreases your chances of winning the case. Hence, you should ask the lawyer how much time he can devote to your case to get the ball rolling. You can ask when your case will get filed.
Asking these questions will help you gather complete information about the lawyer and help you make an informed decision.
