I’m a huge believer in customer service in the legal profession. It’s not taught in law school nor emphasized enough, but it should be. Too many attorneys have no idea how to be business people or even just decent human beings.
You see it a lot with work comp cases for sure. I get around 20 calls a month from injured workers who have lawyers that won’t call them back, don’t respond to emails, yell at them etc. One recent caller to my office had a terrible experience.
He was told that he had hired the “Best workers compensation attorney in Chicago.” What followed was six months of that lawyer refusing to speak to him and insisting he speak with his secretary or paralegal. That just blows my mind. I put my direct line on my website and offer my cell phone to anyone who wants it. I quite honestly don’t know how you can handle a case without talking to your client. It stresses me out just thinking about it.
One day though, this worker did get a call from his lawyer. There had already been a surgery one leg and he was waiting for approval for a surgery on the other leg. His doctor agreed the need for this was work related. The IME doctor said he needed surgery, but it wasn’t work related. That is a very common thing to happen in a work comp case in Illinois.
Instead of discussing how he planned to help his client get the medical care he needed, this attorney lied and said it would take two years to get through court at least and then said they should settle the case. Mind you this worker is out of work, receiving weekly checks and needs an expensive surgery. There is no way to tell if he’ll ever get back to work. All that said, the attorney recommended that he settle out for around $80,000.
That is not the best workers compensation attorney in Chicago. It may be the worst. No lawyer should be telling their client to settle when they are still in need of serious medical care and getting weekly benefit checks. It’s pretty much malpractice to do so.
I will never get why some attorneys treat their clients like garbage. And I certainly will never understand why you’d sell a client out. The difference between what this attorney is recommending and what the actual value might be if he doesn’t make a good recovery is hundreds of thousands of dollars. All I can think of is that some lawyers are hurting for money with a slow down in business from Covid and will go for an easy money grab if they can even if they client gets screwed. It’s pathetic.
