If you have a small personal injury claim, and if you feel comfortable dealing with the insurance company, then you might get your case settled satisfactorily without the aid of a lawyer. Still, in the absence of an attorney, you would lack three elements that would otherwise aid the realization of your hopes for a fair settlement.
You would lack a source of objectivity.
If you have already convinced yourself that you have a small claim, then you might overlook any clue that indicates a greater degree of severity in the amount of damage to your body. It could be that you have sustained an injury with symptoms that are slow-to-appear, such as a brain injury.
That is a serious condition. If your doctor has suggested that you could suffer with such a condition, then you need to get scheduled for a CT scan or an MRI. If you did not hire an Injury Lawyer in Mississauga to support your request for such an imaging study, your insurance company could claim that you were trying to add a needless cost to your case.
Your familiarity with liability issues might get tested
At some point, the insurance company might allege that you were partly responsible for the accident that left you injured. In the absence of an attorney, you would find it hard to fight such an allegation. You might be forced to go along with the insurance company’s insistence that it has reason to reduce the size of your compensation.
You could be forced to sacrifice a large amount of your time.
Lawyers devote a portion of their time to gathering evidence. If you have chosen to dispense with a lawyer, then you have forced yourself to schedule into your day several hours for performing tasks that you normally do not do. If you have been in a car accident, then you should obtain the police report. You should also speak with your doctor about securing evidence of the doctor’s findings, as given in the medical report. Perhaps you should arrange for your doctor to send that report to the insurance company.
Certainly, you could visit the doctor’s offices and obtain your medical records, and then take them to the insurance company. But that might cause problems, if you were to introduce a journal or diary as evidence. The insurance company might suggest that you looked at the doctor’s report, and added statements to your journal that matched with the doctor’s report. Moreover, your doctor would not have all of your medical records. A part of your day would be spent going after some of your test results. You would have to devote hours of your time to completion of a lawyer’s tasks.
