Choosing a California Car Accident Lawyer

When you are looking for a car accident attorney, you are looking for a few things, and they are more specific than the words most firms use to describe themselves.

You are looking for experience. You are looking for someone who can advise you on similar cases to yours, along with some of their results. You are looking for someone you can trust, whose license status you can verify with the State Bar of California. You are looking for somebody with experience in all aspects of the case, from inception to jury verdict. And you are looking for somebody you trust, who cares about you, and who has a team and the processes built out so that you, as the client, receive not just great legal advice or legal skills, but also great legal education.

That last one is the piece people leave off the list, and it is the one that determines how the next eighteen months feel.

Statistically, the odds of being in a trial in a personal injury case are very unlikely. Most cases resolve well before that. So people reasonably ask why a firm's trial record should matter to them.

Short answer: yes, it does matter. Here is the mechanism.

Meaning the trial record is not about going to trial. It is about what the other side believes will happen if they do not pay. An insurer evaluating a firm that has tried cases and a firm that has never tried any is looking at two different levels of exposure and prices accordingly.

So the answer is absolutely yes. It does not mean you are going to be in court. It does not mean you are going to go to trial. It does mean you will be able to put pressure on the other side, and that pressure, when released, is close to a settlement.

At The May Firm, we provide a free case consultation to anybody who calls the office. That is not a qualified offer. Sometimes people call with cases the firm might not handle, and we will still provide a consultation and provide recommendations.

Personally, I would always advise someone to call a lawyer for an opinion, even if that lawyer cannot help them. Most lawyers really do want to help the people who contact them and can point callers in the right direction for their specific situations.

That framing matters because it removes the reason people hesitate. The consultation is not a sales appointment you have to qualify for. It is a conversation in which someone who does this work tells you what your situation actually involves.

A consultation should be tailored to your case rather than run off a script.

At The May Firm, when you call, we go over the things most pertinent to your specific case. If a city or county vehicle was involved, or the crash was caused by a road defect, we go over the Government Claims Act and the six-month clock that comes with it. If it were a rideshare, we want to know whether the driver was carrying a passenger or waiting for one, because coverage differs. If it were a commercial truck, we would talk about preserving the vehicle and the driver's logs. In an ordinary collision, we want to determine where your vehicle is, where the accident occurred, and whether you have received any medical treatment to date.

The type of consultation you get depends on the type of case you are calling about. What shapes it is twenty years of work at the firm, figuring out the simplest way to get as much information as possible and give a client the best advice possible in a reasonable amount of time.

The questions I would suggest asking are straightforward.

Have you handled cases like this before, and how many? If you have a clear idea of your injuries, ask what to expect. Ask for a broad roadmap.

Every case is unique, and it will take different directions and paths, so nobody can promise you a timeline. But a firm that does this work can give you a broad roadmap of what to expect going forward, and a firm that cannot is telling you something.

I would add two more from earlier chapters. Ask what happens to advanced costs if the case does not recover. And ask how the firm handles lien negotiation at the end.