You may have been injured in an accident and needed the services of personal injury attorneys in San Diego. In the process you may have been referred to a lawyer by friend, or found a local lawyer on the internet, or perhaps your doctor referred you to an attorney. However you may be wondering what you are going to do if you discover that your personal injury lawyers are not what you expected and your relationship is getting strained.
There could be many reasons why you can become unhappy with personal injury attorney in San Diego. Maybe your attorney is not returning your telephone calls or when you call the law firm in San Diego, you only speak to a secretary or get voicemail. You never speak to the same person twice. To make matters worse, when you finally get the attorney on the line, he is unfamiliar with your case. And you completely have no idea what is going on with your case.
If this sounds familiar and you are unhappy with your personal injury lawyers, you have the absolute right to fire your attorney at any time. Whether it’s the day after you hired him, a year after, or on the eve of trial, you can fire incompetent personal injury attorneys in San Diego. In the idea situation, you and your attorney are partners in your case and you need to get along and also respect each other. You need to have an open line of communication with personal injury lawyers. You need to have confidence in your attorney and if those things aren’t there, then you should get a second opinion from another law firm in San Diego.
It will not cost you more if you fire any personal injury lawyers in San Diego and hire another one; you will only pay one attorney fee. When personal injury cases resolves, the one attorney fee is then divided between the law firms that represented you, based on “quantum meruit,” i.e., the reasonable value of their services, or in other words, how much work each firm did. If the second attorney did the most work, he’ll get the biggest chunk of the attorney’s fees. If the two firms did about the same amount of work, they will divide the fee equally. How the fee is divided up need not be your concern. The law firms work that out after your case is resolved.
The bottom line is if you have lost confidence in your personal injury lawyers, you should get a legal second opinion, and seriously consider changing attorneys. Your personal injury case is your one shot to seek full compensation for your injuries. Once your case is resolved, you can never go back and get more money.