What Happens After I Hire a Lawyer?

When you have a personal injury accident, such as a car crash, here in Jackson, MS, you will often receive an overwhelming number of promotional materials in the mail with attorneys advertising their services. While that doesn’t generally happen after slips and falls, medical malpractice events, and other personal injury incidents, Jackson attorneys like ours at Pittman Roberts & Welsh, PLLC regularly represent fellow Mississippi residents like you who have suffered harm due to someone else’s negligence.

If you’ve ever watched commercials on television or read the material you’ve received in the mail from a personal injury attorney, then you likely have a general understanding of why you may benefit from hiring an attorney to represent you after you’ve suffered injuries at someone else’s hands.

It’s important that you know that the legal process unfolds differently, depending on what type of personal injury situation you’re involved in. At continuum, we’ll tackle what happens after you hire a lawyer in the context of different personal injury scenarios so that you’ll know what to expect from the process.

What Is a Personal Injury Event?

The terminology “personal injury” refers to an area of the law that deals with incidents that harm a person’s physical body, adversely impact their cognitive functions or other behavioral traits, leave an emotional toll on someone, or prematurely claim their life (results in their wrongful death).

Some common types of personal injury cases our Jackson law firm of Pittman Roberts & Welsh, PLLC regularly handles include:

• Motor vehicle accidents, including car wrecks, motorcycle crashes, truck collisions, and boating accidents
• Nursing home abuse
• Premises liability
• Medical malpractice
• Product liability

The different incidents above may leave victims with a wide range of injuries, from minor to major, including:

• Brain injuries, concussions included
• Burn injuries
• Spinal cord injuries
• Electrocution injuries

Some of these personal injury incidents also result in a person’s premature death.

One common element that these events share is that they could have all been prevented had someone not breached their legal duties to the victims. The concept of liability is at the center of any personal injury case. It is what your attorney focuses their attention on when building your Mississippi case once you hire them.

How Your Lawyer Helps in Your Product Liability Case

Three different types of dangers or defects may warrant the filing of a personal injury claim here in Jackson, MS. They include:

• Manufacturing flaws
• Defective design
• Marketing or advertising errors, also known as failure to warn issues

Mississippi law requires individuals who claim a product hurt them to prove that an entity within the product supply chain didn’t uphold their responsibilities and that their oversight led to you suffering harm.

The problem with product liability cases is determining where the harm stemmed from. Attorneys like ours here at Pittman Roberts & Welsh, PLLC have decades of handling such cases. We can help you pinpoint whether things went wrong and present that evidence at trial if necessary to secure the compensation you require to cover your medical bills and any other incident-related expenses you incurred.

How an Auto Accident Attorney Supports You

While you might receive a lot of correspondence from attorneys here in Jackson wanting to represent you after you were involved in a motor vehicle accident, like a tractor-trailer collision, you’ll also get your fair share of calls and letters from insurance companies too.

Mississippi is an at-fault insurance state, meaning an injured motorist can pursue the party deemed to have caused the accident for damages they suffered. However, that doesn’t mean that insurance adjusters won’t be aggressive in calling in hopes of getting you to release their insured (the driver who struck you) from all claims. They do this in hopes of getting you to sign away your right to pursue compensation before you discover something seriously wrong with you, which would cost them.

Insurers must only communicate with attorneys once a motor vehicle accident victim has hired one. If you have suffered injuries in your crash, then what you say and do can significantly impact how much compensation you can demand in your case.

Your lawyer ensures you know what to say and do to preserve your right to a financial settlement at the end of your case. Crash attorneys also help build your case, which includes compiling evidence proving fault, obtaining medical records or bills, and negotiating out-of-court settlements with insurance companies. Our legal team at Pittman Roberts & Welsh, PLLC will also help you prepare for trial if it becomes necessary to pursue this option in your Jackson car accident case.

How an Attorney Helps You in a Premises Liability Case

A variety of circumstances can result in you getting hurt on someone else’s property, including:

• Dog bites or attacks
• Slip and falls
• Inadequate lighting
• Negligent security
• Attractive nuisances

Mississippi law requires Jackson property owners to take reasonable care to ensure their premises are safe; however, they don’t always take necessary precautions to avoid hazardous situations.

Proving that an owner was aware of their dangerous property situation yet didn’t do anything to remedy it often necessitates the implementation of investigative efforts, which our personal lawyers here at Pittman Roberts & Welsh, PLLC are prepared to help you with so that you can move forward in filing an insurance claim or lawsuit to recover compensation for losses you’ve suffered.

How an Attorney Helps in a Medical Malpractice Case

Many of us trust our medical team to:

• Provide us with prompt and accurate diagnoses of what ails us.
• Ensure medications they prescribe us won’t have a bad interaction with other drugs we’re taking.
• Take caution to perform a surgery just like their peers would.

Doctors and other health care providers make errors, though. While not every scenario where something goes wrong constitutes medical malpractice, any instance in which you can prove that a provider’s actions deviated from the norm may rise to the level of negligence.

You can entrust the attorney you hire from our Jackson, MS law firm to understand where that fine line between an honest mistake and negligence lies. If we determine that negligence occurred, we’ll advise you of our plans to build a case to hold your medical provider liable for their actions.

Pursuing legal action in situations like this allows you to recover compensation for your damages and minimizes the chances of a health care practitioner doing the same thing to someone else that they did to you.

Where To Learn More About What To Expect in Working With a Personal Injury Attorney

The cases described above are only a few examples of personal injury cases we help clients with here at Pittman Roberts & Welsh, PLLC. As mentioned previously, the way cases unfold can vary depending on the case we’re dealing with and its unique circumstances.

Most every case involves us determining whether negligence occurred per Mississippi law and if so, defining how much in monetary losses you suffered. It’s only then that we can make a demand for a settlement in your case.

We want to learn more about what happened to you so we can help you recover the compensation necessary to help you restore some sense of normalcy to your life. Contact us online or call our Jackson office today to schedule your free initial case evaluation. We’ll go over what you can expect when you hire our firm’s attorneys, so you’ll know if we’re a good fit for you.