Is Your Lawyer Ruining Your Case?

For you it will probably/hopefully be a once in a lifetime experience.  For your attorney it will probably/hopefully be an almost every day occurrence, at least in terms of dealing with a case.  While you are likely testifying for the first time, they should be going to trial for a countless time.  If you know how many cases you’ve tried you probably haven’t handled that many.  Every reputable lawyer I know has lost count.

Because lawyers go through the trial process over and over again, they repeat many of the same steps.  How they organize their file, what they do for preparing questions, talking to witnesses ahead of time, going over testimony with a client, reviewing medical records, etc.

Unfortunately, many lawyers also do one thing over and over that can destroy an otherwise good case.  They send their client to a doctor who can testify about the client’s injury.  There is nothing wrong with that in general, but many lawyers use the same doctors over and over and over again.  Because they handle so many cases, the doctor gets a reputation as a whore for the lawyer whose opinion is not credible.  The lawyer is paying the doctor with money that will eventually go to you, so essentially you are paying for something that doesn’t help your case.

The case can get ruined when an Arbitrator knows the doctor is a whore and not only doesn’t give that opinion any value, but also slams the worker for hiring an attorney that made a bad choice.  We hear about this a lot from our defense attorney friends.  There is one downstate doctor who really isn’t a doctor anymore, but rather is a farmer.  He does work still with one lawyer on lots of cases.  When he gives a deposition it’s not in a medical office, but rather in his living room.  That is so un-normal that it makes insurance companies suspicious and in our opinion looks really bad to the Arbitrator.  Not all of these doctors are that odd, but even the otherwise good ones who have a real medical practice can harm a case if they are showing up as witnesses on case after case.

Of course insurance companies make similar mistakes by using the same types of doctors for their “independent” medical examinations.  But who cares if the insurance company doesn’t look credible.  We are only worried about the workers just as you should only be worried about yourself.  So if your lawyer is sending you to a hired gun that you are eventually going to be paying for, you should ask your attorney why they made that recommendation and how often they work with the physician.  If the answer is a lot, it may be a bad sign.