In many states the State Bar Association will require every lawyer advertising to include a warning, essentially saying that:
‘Hiring an attorney is an important decision that should not be made on the basis of advertising alone’.
It might be in the tiniest print imaginable, hidden down where you can’t easily find it, but it is always there – at least it is supposed to be.
Now, if the organization that regulates lawyers is warning you that you need to do this right, and not just chose based on who has the most commercials, or the best billboards, or the catchiest jingle, that really should tell you something, shouldn’t it?
Ok. So then what DO you use to make your selection, if not advertising? Here’s our list of what we think matters, the questions you should ask, the research you should conduct.
Before you get started, it should be said that many of the criteria that we believe are critical for a spinal cord injury or brain injury law firm are things that you will find at Swope, Rodante. That’s not by accident or coincidence, and it’s not just us being egotistical.
You see, we have had 35 years to build and shape and refine our law firm to be as good as we know how to make it. If there is a new technology that we believe a firm should have, we get it. We know training and experience is important – so we provide it. In fact, every single person that gets hired at our firm, from entry level on up, is personally hand selected by one or more of the partners of our firm. And our new lawyers go through at least 4 separate screening interviews so that we can be as absolutely sure as possible that they have the right commitment, moral foundations and work ethic to allow us to continue.
So it is only natural that to our minds, the way Swope, Rodante is structured, organized, staffed, trained and operated is exactly how a law firm should, who is going to accept the massive responsibility to handle catastrophic claims, whose lives and futures are being put into our trust.
Evaluate the whole firm, not just individual lawyers –
A multi-million dollar claim can get complicated. Insurance companies and defendant corporations are focused only on their own profit and will not voluntarily give up anything near fair compensation without fighting on every front to find some possible way to avoid it, and keep their money. There may be several potential defendants and each of them will throw teams of lawyers at you, if they think it can help them win.
Because of this, in a complex case involving products liability, semi-truck accidents, insurance bad faith or something similar, one or two lawyers cannot really be expected to do a great job of recovering every dollar you deserve. In these large personal injury cases, it takes a whole law firm that is designed in a way to function together – as a team that is actually set up to take on the responsibility of these huge important cases.
