“What do you need money for?”

It’s early 2018 and we already have a clear winner for the worst thing a Chicago workers’ compensation attorney will say to a client.  It comes from a Chicago attorney who is part of a firm that we get more complaints about than any other by a wide margin and generally treat their clients like garbage.  They constantly have their secretaries lie for them and if they actually do return a phone call, they either lie or say something that belittles the client.

In this case, the person that reached out to me had been off work for two months with a clearly compensable injury.  They had not received any TTD benefits even though their boss agreed that the injury was 100% work related.  I looked the case up and discovered that the attorney had not filed any motion for trial.

Before calling me, the injured worker called this terrible lawyer one last time and asked when they could expect to be paid.  The lawyer was put off and said, “What do you need money for?”

I can’t imagine being such a garbage human being that I would ever say that to a client.  How about the fact that the money is owed? How about the fact the client needs to pay the rent and bills?  How about the lawyer go two months without any income and see how it feels?

Sometimes your benefits will get denied and it will take some time to find out if you will get paid.  But during that time it’s your lawyer J-O-B to get in to court and/or do whatever else they can to help you win. That’s why you hire them.  An Illinois work comp attorney is there to protect you and if they don’t they are worthless.  Of course in this case the lawyer is worthless and just a bad guy.

The only silver lining?  It costs nothing to switch attorneys and since this client got in touch before a settlement offer was made, it was easy to have a new lawyer take it over and get in going in the right direction.

What makes some attorneys this awful? I’d hope that it’s not being an attorney that does it to them and that they’d be bad people in any scenario.  No idea why you’d want to treat people this way.  Happy clients is as good as it gets.