There are several benefits to retaining an attorney if you have been involved in a car accident and are in need of help to recover a settlement. One of the greatest benefits in hiring a car accident attorney is that these attorneys are generally able to get many different types of evidence for a case that a normal lay person will have trouble getting. Making sure you have all the relevant evidence, information, and resources for your case may help ensure a better outcome.
Types of Evidence
One type of evidence that a car accident attorney will have an easier time obtaining is the full police and accident report with witness statements. Most times at an accident scene, you will not receive the full accident report immediately. You may only receive instructions on how to later request the full report.
Having the full accident report, police report, and corresponding witness statements will give you proof of what occurred during the incident. These documents can be critical pieces of evidence. A car accident attorney will have more direct routes to obtain these documents and can often get them much faster and more simply than a lay person.
Another piece of evidence that can prove crucial if you have to file a car accident lawsuit is the claims file from the insurance companies that are involved. This could be the claims file from your insurance company, the other driver’s insurance company, or both.
These files are pieces of evidence that you may not need to have until after you file a lawsuit, but they will provide a large amount of information that may help your case. This type of evidence will generally be no trouble for a car accident attorney to gather during the discovery phase of your matter.
If you have been injured in a car accident, your medical records and medical billing records will be vital for your case. Although most laypeople are able to get these types of records on their own, car accident attorneys usually have specific protocols and procedures to retrieve these records that are more timely and efficient.
Some firms even have entire departments dedicated to medical records. Given how large some medical records files may be and how they must be analyzed and organized, the task of collecting medical and billing records is less complicated for a car accident attorney.
Expert reports and analyses are a part of car accident lawsuits that many lay people are not fully, if at all, aware of. These reports can be those of doctors who report on your injuries or can be from specialists and accident reconstructionists who report on things like accident dynamics and causation.
This type of evidence can be important in proving what injuries you have sustained and showing that the accident caused the claimed injuries. These types of reports are extremely difficult to seek out if you are not an attorney. Once a car accident attorney can secure these reports, they may prove invaluable for your case.
Benefits of an Attorney
If you are considering using a car accident attorney for your personal injury case, it is important to consider and weigh the benefits. The ability to more quickly and easily secure certain types of evidence such as accident and police reports, witness statements, insurance claim files, medical records, medical billing records, and expert reports is just one such benefit.
Car accident attorneys, by the nature of their profession, have a much simpler time getting these types of evidence. Having all important and relevant evidence needed for your case will go a long way in making sure you reach the most beneficial resolution to your car accident case as possible.
