You’re better off hiring a personal injury lawyer in Lethbridge, if you’re filing a personal injury claim or case. That said, you don’t need to hire a personal injury lawyer. You can still win your case or claim provided that you know certain things.
In fact, representing yourself may be practical if and when you sustained minor injuries and the defendant was clearly legally responsible for your accident. You are not likely to win a big settlement anyway, so hiring a good personal injury lawyer would make little economic sense. You’ll need to understand a few concepts if you decide to represent yourself. These include calculating damages, negligence, the defendant’s insurance policy limits, and more.
When should you represent yourself?
Yes, you can win a substantial settlement if you represent yourself. This is not unheard of. You may want to consider representing yourself if you have extensive knowledge of personal injury law and you have some experience in representing yourself in the past.
That said, there are two things that you should consider before you make the final decision:
● How severe are your injuries?
● Can you easily prove that the other party was at fault?
How severe are your injuries?
It may be worth trying to represent yourself if your injuries were minor. You should hire a good personal injury lawyer if, however, your injuries were more major in nature. Accidents that result in serious injuries tend to be more complex in nature.
Can you easily prove that the other party was at fault?
You can easily represent yourself and win if you can easily prove that the other party was at fault. However, if this is not the case, you’re probably better off hiring a good personal injury lawyer to represent you.
Estimating damages
Damages in a personal injury case can be broken down into two categories:
● Special damages
● General damages
Special damages can easily be calculated. These include medical bills, lost wages, lost future wages, and more. Note that lost future wages generally have to be calculated at the present value.
There are some issues though. If you were not working after the personal injury accident, it will be next to impossible to calculate the exact value of lost future wages. This is also true if you were switching to a higher-paying job before your accident, or if you work for yourself. You, obviously, can’t claim lost future wages if you’re retired.
You’ll need to provide the defendant’s personal injury lawyer in Lethbridge with copies of your business records and tax returns if you’re self-employed.
General damages are harder to calculate. These include such things as pain and suffering. Insurance adjusters tend to use a formula and multipliers to calculate this.
Calculating Pain and Suffering
Note that juries don’t use formulas and multipliers when calculating general damages. They tend to consider the following factors when doing so:
● The nature and severity of your injuries
● Whether you’re a good or bad witness
● If the jury likes you
● If the jury thinks you’re lying or have lied in the past
● Whether you have a criminal record
● Whether the jury can easily understand your injuries
● Whether most of your medical bills are not hospital or doctors’ bills
Send in a demand letter
This is basically a formal letter sent to the defendant’s insurance company that outlines the nature of your accident, property damage, and injuries, along with the amount of compensation that you want to receive from the defendant.
You never want to accept the first offer from the defendant’s insurance company. This will be ridiculously low. You can generally get the offer that you want and need if you just ‘hold out and negotiate!’