Call a Lawyer
After you have filed your police report and notified the insurance company of your accident, the next thing that you should do is to contact an experienced car accident, pedestrian accident, or bicycle accident attorney (depending upon the type of crash in which you were involved) in Las Vegas.
Why Call an Attorney?
If you have filed your insurance claim and everything is going seemingly well, you may be wondering why you need to call an attorney. Calling an attorney can be very helpful if and when:
- Your injuries are severe;
- Fault is disputed;
- Your claim has been lowballed/you have been offered a settlement that is less than you think you deserve; or
- The insurance adjuster disputed the degree of injury you have suffered.
The above issues are all more common during the insurance claim process than you may think. Insurance adjusters are tasked with saving an insurance company money, which often means finding any reason to lower the amount of damages that you’re entitled.
How an Attorney Helps
An attorney wears many hats during the claim process. To begin, your attorney will review your claim free of charge. From there, a skilled attorney will investigate your accident, and may even hire other professionals–including accident reconstruction experts–to aid in the process. The purpose of this is to determine exactly how the accident occurred and identify any potentially liable parties.
After fault is determined, your attorney will also investigate your damages and determine the value of your claim. Then, your attorney will send a demand letter to the insurance adjuster responsible for your claim, which explains in detail what your claim is worth, why, and how much you are asking for.
Your attorney can also aid you in rejecting a settlement offer and will represent you in all negotiations. If negotiations are unsuccessful, your attorney can file a lawsuit and litigate your case on your behalf.
About Hiring an Attorney
Your attorney will review your case for free, and then work on a contingency fee basis from there, which means that any fees that the attorney collects are contingent on your case being successful. Once you receive your settlement, your attorney will collect a percentage of this. If you do not receive a settlement, then you will not owe the attorney anything.
As for acting immediately, there are a couple reasons why you should contact an attorney ASAP. First, the earlier that you contact an attorney, the sooner an investigation can be opened, and the more likely that it is that evidence will be preserved that is essential to your claim. Of course, this means that you may also receive your settlement at a faster rate, too.
The other reason that you want to act quickly is due to Nevada’s statute of limitations, which limits the amount of time that you have to file a lawsuit after a crash to two years from the date of accident. If you wait longer than two years, you may be barred from recovering damages indefinitely.