In the majority of personal injury cases, a medical examination (at no cost to the claimant of course!) is arranged for a specialist consultant to examine the injured victim and produce an in depth medical report detailing the accident and the injuries to the claimant.
How we value your claim:
- The claimant attends a convenient medical appointment with a specialist medico-legal consultant who will perform a thorough examination and discuss the accident and injuries with the injured victim.
- The medical report will detail an opinion and prognosis of the injuries to the claimant. This will tell us vital information such as how long the claimant was suffering for, how severely they were suffering, how this affected their work and personal life, and any further problems that may occur.
- We will then send the claimant a copy of their medical report so they can agree, or question, any of the contents. If the claimant is happy with the report, we will disclose a copy to the third party insurers and invite them to make an offer for settlement of the claim.
- We will receive an offer, and provide our expert advice to the claimant as to whether the offer is a fair offer.
So how do we know if an offer is fair?
We can use the JSB Guidelines – these are a set of guidelines whereby we can match the claimant’s injury information to the guidelines and see what the claim by these guidelines should be worth.
- We can also look at past cases (not just from us!) that are similar and look how much these claims were settled for.
As a specialist firm of personal injury solicitors, The Injury lawyers aim to provide our clients with the highest possible service and the maximum compensation they re entitled to. And we will fight hard for you!
And we can’t stress the importance of instructing a specialist personal injury law firm such as ourselves!
Every day we are taking on more cases (mostly road traffic accidents) whereby the injured party has already been offered quantities of money in settlement of their claim from insurance companies and claims management companies.
Insurance companies will attempt to contact the victim as quickly as possible and offer them a sum of money in settlement of their claim or offer them legal assistance. But why?
- Insurance companies will try an offer a quick cash settlement that is more often than not nowhere near the value the claim should be worth. We know this because we know that they cannot possibly know how much the claim is worth until medical evidence has been acquired, and because at the early stages of your injuries they will have no idea how long you will be suffering for!
If they refer you legal assistance, they will often take a referral fee (i.e. selling your claim on) for a claims management company or even a solicitor. You should always use an independent firm of solicitors – the choice as to who deals with your claim is yours! Not someone else’s to make for you and profit from!
The sums are often tempting – And we give them the same advice:
- The only way your claim can be fairly and accurately measured is by using medical evidence from a specialist medico-legal consultant. We at The Injury Lawyers do our homework; we make sure we get you the maximum compensation you are entitled to!
Ultimately, the choice as to who you instruct to deal with your claim for personal injury is entirely and 100% up to you! So look around for who can offer the best advice!