Hi, my name is Matthew Eason. I’m a personal injury and wrongful death attorney in Sacramento. I’ve been practicing in that area for over 25 years. In this video, I’ll ask, “How do you choose the right wrongful death attorney for a case?”
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Word of mouth is an excellent resource for selecting an attorney. However, the problem with word of mouth is that people often refer to their friend or acquaintance, who may not have expertise in wrongful death.
In the more modern era, many websites, such as Super Lawyers, lawyers.com, and Martindale Hubbell, purport to refer you to lawyers specialized in your area. However, some of the problems with that choice selection are that those lawyers have subscribed to be on those websites. Some of them are very capable. Some of them do not. There’s not a good vetting of those lawyers for those websites. Google reviews and Yelp reviews can also be helpful. At the very least, it gives you an idea of what that lawyer’s interactions with their clients are like. Some lawyers are very good at interacting with clients but may not be good at dealing with insurance companies. There’s a limitation in relying too heavily on reviews.
Another great way to help find a lawyer is to look for a lawyer with a web page specific to your issues and questions. If their webpage is general and their practice area includes everything from construction defect to family law, then that’s probably not a good wrongful death personal injury attorney. If their web page focuses on injury and injury victims, that will more likely be a good resource for you.
All of those have pros and cons, and the reality is. It would be best if you combined all of them. It would be best to look at who is on the big referral sites, who’s on Yelp, and who’s on Google with good reviews. Who do you know? Please look at their website and see if it fits me right. Besides researching the lawyer and the law firm’s background, there are a few other factors you should consider, such as the law firm’s size and the law firm’s geographic location.
Some of the best lawyers I have worked with are from small counties, have a solo practitioner, or maybe just one partner. They can be fantastic lawyers, but they’re typically fantastic general-purpose lawyers. In a small county, you find yourself practicing what’s sometimes known as door law. It’s whatever comes inside your door. One of the challenges of choosing a lawyer from a rural community is that that lawyer typically has to handle many different matters with different varieties. So they may have clients in the morning for a criminal law matter, clients during the lunch hour for a family law matter, and clients in the afternoon for a negligence matter. They can be very good at handling all those different matters. Still, they don’t become experts or exceptionally skilled in one area as you can in a larger city.
So, choosing a lawyer for a larger city usually makes sense in more significant cases. When choosing an attorney from a larger city, it’s sometimes better to select a lawyer not in a small firm, such as with only one or two attorneys. The problem with a small firm is that as litigation heats up, it can completely consume that law firm’s resources. All of their staff becomes dedicated to working on that particular file, and if that file is not yours, you’re getting pushed down the road unnecessarily.
The flip side of hiring a large firm with dozens of lawyers is that you can find a single person in a large mill. One associate comes and goes the next day, and someone new has to get up to speed on your file.
Most people find the most satisfaction when they’re hiring a mid-size firm. A mid-sized firm between 5 and 15 attorneys typically has the resources to handle, no matter what the workload is concerning a trial. They also have the financial resources to back the expert witnesses, yet they are also small enough to give you the needed attention.
The last comment I have about choosing attorneys is about geography. Ideally, you want to select an attorney whose office you could personally walk into, and that can be a bit slippery on today’s Internet. Many attorneys from Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco are setting up satellite offices here in Sacramento or other counties and claiming to be from here. The reality is they never actually show up. They work out of a post office box or have a staff person. You want to hire an attorney that you can physically walk into their office when you’re ready to work on your case, sit down across from the attorney or the staff person, and work together towards a result. You don’t want to have to be phoning it into Los Angeles.
The other challenge of hiring a lawyer from Los Angeles, San Diego, or elsewhere is that the insurance company bets that the lawyer wants to avoid coming to Sacramento to go to trial. We are six blocks from the courthouse if you hire a Sacramento lawyer like our office. That insurance company knows we’re willing to go to trial because it’s just a walk down the street compared to somebody else’s flight and hotel room. You don’t want an insurance company calling an attorney’s bluff because they are not in the community.
When choosing a Sacramento wrongful death attorney, it would be best to consider many different things. Not just the geographics, the firm’s size, or the internet reputation or website. It’s a culmination of all of those things. Please spend some time looking at our firm on the Internet. Could you look at us and consider hiring us? If you would like to talk to me personally, please give me a call.