Personal Injury – should I represent myself in court?

Legal by  Mashum Mollah 01 June 2020 Last Updated Date: 28 November 2024

Personal Injury

At the outset, personal injury claims seem straightforward. There’s nothing to it, you might be forgiven for thinking. You have been injured due to third-party negligence, and now you are asking for a compensation reward that reflects the average payout for similar cases. Why would you need a lawyer at this stage, you think to yourself, as surely the responsible third-party will want to right their wrong and avoid legal matters as swiftly as possible. Unfortunately, you would almost always be expecting too much from the world. As the character of Winston Churchill put it in the movie Darkest Hour, “you cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth” (not a real-life quote, but apt all the same). The point is that when you have been injured and you are facing recovery time away from work, as well as lost earnings and potentially mounting medical bills, you are at the mercy of the third-party to pay up (see gacovinolake.com for more information). This gives you no leverage, and as we have seen from history, time, and time again, where people are not forced to do the right thing, they often don’t.

The proper procedure sets time limits

When you decide to ‘go it alone’, you rely on the negligent third-party to provide timely replies to your inquiries into compensation. You may even expect the third-party to carry out their own investigations into the matter and come up with a settlement figure for the purpose of negotiation. Plainly and simply, this is never going to happen. Where a business entity is not held to account via legal routes, the daily working processes within that company will not usually cater for such efforts, meaning no department or manager or worker of any kind will be working on your behalf to settle the case (and no such case-worker is likely to be assigned). If you want to avoid a situation in which weeks go by with no reply, you need to get in touch with a personal injury lawyer.

Is it worth it?

A lot of personal injury lawyers work on a no-win-no-fee basis. This means that you often won’t be required to pay legal costs out of your own pocket (the lawyer takes payment from the compensation reward). In exchange for ensuring the claim is filed and processed on time, the ‘cost’ of the lawyer is arguably worth every penny, as the risk of not receiving a payout is more or less completely removed.

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Mashum Mollah

Mashum Mollah is an entrepreneur, founder and CEO at Viacon, a digital marketing agency that drive visibility, engagement, and proven results. He blogs at thedailynotes.com.

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