http://www.727injury.com (727) 381-2300 St Petersburg Personal Injury Attorneys McQuaid & Douglas
How quickly should you get a lawyer after a car accident? Now this question is often asked by our clients, uh, we understand that there are many people out there that have questions after a car accident and they, they basically, they're undergoing the stress of the accident and the injuries from the car accident and they think to themselves, well, I'm not really sure when I should get a lawyer involved. And so the purpose of this video is to provide some type of guidance from an, uh, basically an expert opinion about car accidents and someone who is handling this day in and day out. So my advice is basically this, the first week after a car accident is always the most important. You've got insurance companies contacting you, you've got a pain, uh, you've got damage to your car, you've got everything going on, you get the stress of the accident, all these issues in your life that are unexpected and you really don't know what to do or where to go.
And so there are, but in order to recover compensation at the end of the day, there are certain steps that are very important to be taken during that first week of the first week following the car accident. And so if you contact a lawyer, my advice is definitely within the first week. You can do it within a few days. It doesn't have to be the day after. Generally speaking, the sooner you speak to a car accident lawyer, the better. But again, there's a lot going on. I understand the stress after an accident and it's just not always feasible to be able to get in to see someone immediately. Plus of course you want to do your research on a lawyer, you want to ask your friends, ask your family members if they know someone, do some online research, check the five star reviews, et cetera, et cetera. So it's not the end all be all that you get in to see somebody that day or the next day.
But I'd say generally speaking, you want to get someone involved within that week. And as I mentioned earlier, it's because after a car accident, although you have 14 days to get medical treatment in order to trigger your PIP benefits, that doesn't mean that if you wait days a week or even up to 14 days that the insurance company is going to pay you an appropriate amount of money for your injuries. If you wait, if you wait several days or like I said, up to 14 days, insurance company's going to look at you and say, how badly could you have possibly been injured if you waited all that time. So that's when it comes back to the car accident lawyer to basically explain that to you and get you in with somebody who is a specialist. And that goes to my next point, getting you in with a specialist.
Some people go, they don't know where to turn after a car accident. They look, they look to their family practitioner, their family doctor, their general practitioner, and they wait a couple of days to get an appointment. They show up and that doctor says, Oh, we don't handle car accidents. And then you've already missed two, three, four days, you don't know where to go. So again, the car accident lawyer can assist you with getting into somebody quickly and somebody who's a specialist. Also to my point earlier about the insurance companies contacting you, it's very confusing. Usually you'll have the car accident, you have the company for the at fault driver calling you and trying to find out information about the accident. You'll have your own carrier calling you, trying to find out if you're going to seek medical treatment and what the extent of your injuries are. You also have someone contacting you regarding your PIP insurance and you might have someone contacting you about the property damage.
*The above has been transcribed by a third party service and has not been checked for accuracy
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