If you have an Illinois workers’ compensation case, you don’t want to hire the wrong law firm. Unfortunately, you usually won’t know you made a bad choice until you’ve signed the paperwork and the case has started.
The good news is that it costs nothing to switch attorneys. The bad news is that in some cases a lawyer won’t want to take over your case. A recent caller had a terrible law firm on her case. Her question to me was a good one. She asked, “Is it even worth it to switch lawyers?”
What she meant was, will anything even change? In her case, the answer was yes because even though the case was filed only a month or so ago, she’s already had three phone calls, out of four total, not returned.
With Covid and a lot of law firms working remotely, we’ve seen lawyers that usually give so-so service give terrible service. They don’t have their secretaries or clerks there nagging at them to call someone back. They have the distractions of home of a TV, spouse, kids, etc. The people who suffer are their clients.
So when isn’t it worth it? Well, every case is different, but we avoid taking over cases when:
- There’s a really big settlement offer and it’s not clear the case is worth much more.
- You’ve had multiple lawyers already. If the first one you hire is bad, you better make sure the second one is the right fit. We will consider being the third lawyer on a case, but there would have to be a good explanation as to what went wrong.
- The case has gone to trial. If you are waiting on an Arbitrator’s decision, there’s nothing a new lawyer can do to speed up that process. If the case is on appeal, it’s better for the attorney who tried the case to handle that.
Those are the biggest situations when it wouldn’t be worth it to a lawyer or likely to you. So when is it worth it:
- When your lawyer doesn’t call back.
- When you discover your attorney has been lying to you.
- When the lawyer doesn’t do what they say they will.
- If you discover a conflict of interest.
- If the attorney yells at you or belittles you.
- When your attorney leaves the firm and they try to replace them with a young, inexperienced attorney.
We are unique in that if you call us, we’ll talk to you for free and give you an honest opinion about if you have a good firm and if it’s worth it to switch or not. Contact us any time for a free consultation.