By Omid Rejali, Esq.
As Covid-19 ravages through our country, personal injury firms that work on what I like to call “turn and burn” model have become increasingly desperate to get cases. You may have noticed a substantial increase in personal injury advertising on your social media platforms like in stagram and facebook.
Personal injury law firms with the “turn and burn” model need to have cases coming in as they settle cases that are going out. For example, if they settle 5 cases in one month, they would need to sign up at least 4 or 5 cases to be able to run their business. As you can see, this model can become all about the numbers and, not so much about you, the human being who has suffered a loss through no fault of their own.
The pandemic has hit these firms the hardest and so they have resorted to aggressive advertising campaigns, including misleading information to be able to get as many cases as they can. These advertising’s may include statements such as millions and millions recovered or that they settled a case for $2 million dollars. Although, those statements may be true, you want to make sure that the firm that is advertising those results actually obtained those results.
Due to the pandemic, business slowed down for these “turn and burn” firms, and competition at the same time increased because now these firms could pick up cases in any part of the state or county by advertising there since businesses were not allowed to see clients in person and were conducting everything via various video platforms. And so, they began heavy advertising and I have seen many firms with few years experience claiming that they have recovered over $300,000,000. Again, although that may be true it behooves you to conduct further investigation to make sure that the firm itself has actually obtained those results, and is not using some other firms results as their own.
This is crucial because as part of the pandemic advertising from these firms, many of these firms won’t even handle your case, they are merely a marketing vehicle to get the cases and will give your case to some other firm to work on, without you knowing.
With more and more people losing jobs and potentially not having health care as a result, it is extremely important to conduct your due diligence more than ever, before hiring your personal injury lawyer in San Diego or anywhere else for that matter.
Finally, it has also come to my attention that attorneys are taking high percentages from client’s as a fee. Recently, I became aware of fees being charged as high as 45% for a simple case.
The market rate currently is 33 1/3 percent if your cases settles before a lawsuit is filed and 40% thereafter. Although, that is the case it is important to know that you have an absolute right under business and professions code 6147 & 6148 to negotiate that fee with your attorney. Do that before you sign a contract.
Thank you for reading my blog. I hope this information is helpful.
If you have any other questions, feel free to contact my office at 619-887-4148, send us a text message to 619-485-6313, send me an email at omid@rejalilawfirm.com or leave us a message here and we will get back to you.
Born to get you justice.
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