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Welcome and thank you for joining me. I’m Gerry Oginski, a New York medical malpractice
and personal injury trial lawyer practicing law here in the state of New York. In today’s
video tip, I answer the question how you go about hiring a medical malpractice or accident
attorney. In all likelihood, you have never done it before so I am going to give you some
guidance in how to do it. First of all, you have to answer this question: are you going
to select an attorney the way you select a plumber? By pulling out the yellow pages and
going to the biggest ad there, thinking that the biggest ad means that it’s the best
attorney? Well, if you do that you may be selecting the wrong attorney. You may not,
but here’s the problem. Lawyers spend a ton of money advertising in the yellow pages.
Just because a lawyer has a full page ad doesn’t mean that they are any better than someone
that has a half page ad. Look to see what information they’re providing to you and
how they can help solve your legal problem. Most of those yellow pages ads do nothing
more than shout out messages such as “Hurt? Injured? Call me!” Without giving any real
reasons why. When you’re looking for an attorney, I suggest you go online. You’re
watching this video online; take a look carefully at what the attorney offers you or their website.
Do they give you free reports? Do they provide sufficient information about similar cases
to yours? Not just their successes in the past, but look to see if they give you reasons
and explanations as to how lawsuits work. Do they tell you what an attorney looks for
in evaluating a case like yours? It is my belief that it is important to educate a potential
consumer before they ever walk in the door. It is so important for you to know how lawsuits
work before you ever pick up the phone to call an attorney. Find out whether the lawyer
you’re going to is going to give you that information either online, in a video tip,
in a free report, or in a book - or not. And if they don’t, ask why not. Why don’t
you have this information? Why don’t you give this information away freely? And I’ll
tell you why. Most lawyers don’t want to do that because they want you come into their
office first and they want to sell you once you’re in their office. But, I‘m of the
different belief. I think you are entitled to get as much information as possible so
that you are a better informed consumer before you ever pick up the phone to call me to ask
specific questions. So how are you going to hire an attorney? You’re going to do a thorough
search. You’re going to go online; you’re going to do your Google search about medical
malpractice cases or accident lawyers in your area in New York. And then you are going to
click on the attorney’s website and see whether they’ve got blogs, whether they’ve
got relevant information about cases just like yours. There is one final point that
I need to tell you about. Find out whether the lawyer that you are looking to is in a
large firm or a small firm. Why does it make a difference? Because in a large firm you’re
going to have different attorneys working on your case on a daily basis. Initially,
you’re going to have junior attorneys working on your case all the way up to the point where
you get to trial. And then you’re going to have a partner or a senior partner handling
your case. When you go to a solo attorney or a small firm, you’re going to have usually
one dedicated attorney that works on your case from start to finish. They’re going
to know exactly what goes on with your case every step of the way. So that anytime you
can pick the phone and call that attorney and say “Hey what just happened on my case?”
And the lawyer doesn’t have to ask three or four different people or check the computer
to find out what happened. You also want to know how quickly the attorney is going to
respond to any questions during the course of your litigation. Do they take a while?
Will they respond by email? Will they respond only by phone or by letter? How often will
they update you? That’s very important to understand. Just to give you a last example,
I had a call from a gentleman that lives in New Jersey but sent me an inquiry while he
was vacationing in Florida. He was so impressed that with the fact that I responded to him
immediately and called him on a Sunday morning to ask him detailed questions about what was
going on with him, that in his opinion that was so important. And that’s it for today’s
video tip on how you hire an attorney. I’m Gerry Oginski, thank you for joining me. Have
a great day.