Questions

Nothing, and the first conversation is with a lawyer rather than with an intake screener reading from a script. If we do not think we can improve on what you would get without us, we will tell you that on the call and you will not owe us anything for hearing it.

We work on a contingency fee: a percentage of what we recover, set out in writing and signed before we open a file. There is no hourly billing and no retainer, and no fee unless we win.

The firm advances them — filing fees, records, depositions, reconstruction, medical review — and they are reimbursed out of the recovery at the end, separately from the fee. We tell you what we expect a case to cost before we spend it, and on the files where the expenses are substantial, such as catastrophic and trucking cases, we have that conversation specifically rather than in general terms.

With a lawyer. We have four attorneys and a small support team, and the reason the caseload is capped is so that the person handling your file is one of them. You will also work with a case manager on scheduling and records, because that is genuinely their job and they are better at it — but the questions that decide your case get answered by the lawyer handling it.

Fewer than a firm our size could carry, deliberately. We do not publish a number because it moves, but the working rule is that a partner should be able to tell you where your file is without looking it up. That is the constraint the whole practice is built around, and it is the reason we say no to cases other firms would take.

Longer than anyone wants, and the honest reason is worth understanding: a case cannot be valued properly until the medical picture has settled enough to project forward. Settling before that means guessing at the largest part of the claim. Straightforward cases with completed treatment can resolve in months; a catastrophic case or one that has to be tried is measured in years. We would rather tell you that at the start than manage your expectations downward later.

Most cases resolve without a trial, but the ones that resolve well are the ones prepared as though they will be tried. That means you should expect to give a deposition if suit is filed, and to attend mediation. We prepare people for both properly rather than the week before. If your case is one of the few that goes in front of a jury, you will have met the lawyer trying it many times by then.

Get seen, and describe every symptom rather than the worst one. Photograph the vehicles before they are repaired or scrapped. Ask for the crash report number. Do not give a recorded statement to the other driver's insurer, and do not sign anything that arrives with a check attached until somebody has read the back of it. Then call a lawyer — not because there is a countdown, but because most of what gets lost in an injury case is lost in the first three weeks and none of it is dramatic while it is happening.

Usually not, and it is a manageable problem when we know about it early. What matters is what was said. People rarely lie in those calls; the difficulty is that the honest answer to "how are you feeling?" in the first week is often "sore, I think I'm fine", and that sentence gets read back eighteen months later against a surgical recommendation. Tell us exactly what you said. A problem we know about in week one is very different from one that surfaces in a deposition.

Yes. We regularly file in Cobb, Fulton, Cherokee, Paulding and Douglas, and in Georgia the county where a case is filed is usually the county where the defendant lives rather than the county where the collision happened — so the answer often is not the one people expect. If your matter belongs somewhere we do not practice, we will tell you and, where we can, point you at someone who does.

Sí. Nuestro equipo de admisión habla español y contestamos el teléfono las veinticuatro horas. Puede contarnos lo que pasó en español desde la primera llamada, y hay una página completa en español en este sitio. La consulta es gratuita.

Because taking a case we cannot improve is not doing anyone a favor. We turn down matters where the available insurance means you would net about the same without a lawyer, where the liability facts will not carry the cost of proving them, and where the honest answer is that the case is worth less than somebody has told you it is worth. We also turn down anything outside injury and death claims, because that is all we do. Saying no in the first conversation is the least expensive thing we can do for you.