While I always encourage people to stay with their Illinois work comp attorney when it makes sense to, sometimes I talk to an injured worker who clearly has a terrible lawyer and they waffle about switching. It’s like Stockholm Syndrome where the kidnap victim becomes sympathetic to their prisoner.

These are things I’ve heard from injured workers who have attorneys who haven’t called back in weeks, yelled at them, didn’t show up to court, forgot basic details about their case or didn’t file motions that they promised to file.

  • I don’t want to make him mad.
  • I’m sure they are busy.
  • This is probably normal, right?
  • It probably won’t be better with anyone else.
  • I shouldn’t have bothered him.

This is just a sampling from what I’ve heard over the years. And I’m talking about attorneys who are clearly doing a terrible job. You should respect your attorney and they should respect you. But respect is earned and when they are acting this awful, you need to look out for you and get a new law firm before it’s too late.

And it can get too late. I was called last year by an injured worker with a major back injury who had a lawyer that for whatever reason wasn’t up to the task. It is a strong case that was denied by a hack IME and the lawyer has done nothing to solve the problem. He’s also ignored phone calls. I’ve heard the attorney is having some personal problems, but that is not the fault of the injured worker. A worker shouldn’t get screwed over because the attorney is dealing with something.

I recommended a new lawyer and this worker gave some of the excuses I listed above. They had a consult with the new attorney who wanted to take over the case and laid out a clear plan as to how to fix the problems. The worker thought about it, but decided to let his lawyer have one more chance. Fast forward six months later and nothing has changed other than the insurance company making a low ball offer to resolve the case. This offer doesn’t include the surgery this worker needs.

The worker called me again and said he finally wanted to switch because the lawyer promised a phone call to discuss how to get the surgery and never called. It regrettably is too late because the settlement offer limits the fee a new attorney could get on the case. The downstate attorney I recommended declined to touch it as a result. I doubt anyone else who does a good job will be interested now either.

So this worker is unfortunately stuck with a bad lawyer who won’t fight for him. He’s getting screwed over, but didn’t make the change when he new he had the wrong firm. It’s like being at a restaurant and seeing a bunch of hairs in your food and not sending it back until you’ve eaten most of the plate. At some point it becomes too late.

My advice when things with your lawyer aren’t making you happy is to talk to someone about it. I will often discover that when the client thinks their attorney isn’t doing anything that trial motions have been filed and the attorney is doing everything they can. In other words no new attorney could speed up the process. In other instances we’ll discover that nothing is being done. If you want a free and CONFIDENTIAL consultation about your case, please call us any time at 312-346-5578.