When it comes to personal injury cases, preparation and confidence can make or break your outcome. In part 4 of our Road to Recovery Series, Clarke explains why self-reliance—while admirable—can backfire when you’re up against insurance companies and adjusters who do this every day. Learn how an experienced attorney can maximize your recovery, minimize expenses, and help you walk into your case fully prepared, confident, and in control.
Here’s what we discuss in this episode:
⚖️ Preparation & Confidence: why being ready leads to stronger results
💪 Self-Reliance Myth: when doing it yourself can hurt your case
👨💼 Hiring a Lawyer: how professional expertise changes the outcome
💰 Maximize Recovery: finding hidden policies and additional coverage
0:00 – Intro
0:56 – Self-Reliance vs. Legal Assistance
2:35 –Advantages of Hiring a Lawyer
4:57 – Maximizing Revenue and Minimizing Expenses
Featured Keyword & Other Tags
personal injury attorney, legal preparation, insurance adjusters, accident claims, medical bills, liability, case strategy, maximize settlement, legal confidence
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Transcript (Click To Read)
Why You Shouldn’t Handle a Personal Injury Case Alone
Clarke Speaks 00:00
I’m Clark, speaks the catastrophic injury lawyer. Welcome to the verdict again. Most of the reason why people have are fearful of these things is because they don’t know what to expect, you know? And so in that situation, we want to turn the lights on so they know exactly what to respect expect, so that they’re prepared, so that they walk in not know, not going, oh my gosh, what’s this guy going to ask me? So they know. So when the question comes, they go, I knew you’re going to ask me that. And here’s the answer, you know. And so we feel like, if a person is prepared, and they’ll be confident, if they’re confident, they’ll perform well, if they perform well, that will get the result that we want. And that’s been our experience.
Speaker 1 00:37
Got it sounds like to me that I’d be like me trying to play a basketball game against Caitlin Clark, I would want a professional there, like Angel Reese to go against me and help me and not I wouldn’t go into that match confident, and that’s for
Clarke Speaks 00:49
sure. So I think that’s right. I think so. So to follow up on that question, I think that’s the question that a lot of people ask, Should I do this myself, or should I hire a lawyer? Right? A lot of people ask that, and it seems like the more sophisticated a person is, the more likely they are to ask that question, do I do I? Should I do this myself? Or should I hire and I get it because it’s like, maybe they do their own taxes. Maybe they change their own oil, you know, they do. Maybe they built the deck on the back of their house and they maybe they replace stuff on their car, you know? And a lot of the people that we represent in our firm are very self reliant kind of people. They don’t, they’ve never really, they don’t really get unnecessary services or whatever medical or otherwise, you know what I mean, like, and the reason is they don’t have time. The reason is because, and you know this as a college athlete, and there are times when nobody cares if you’re if you’re sick or tired or hurt or whatever you you got to gain. You have to you have school, you have responsibilities, and you have to do the things that you have to do. So people, I get why people have that mentality. And so people don’t. People don’t necessarily want to go the doctor, and they want to go ahead and and and they want to resolve it themselves. The problem is, is that there it is, like, like you said, it’s like playing basketball, like me playing basketball against Caitlin Clark. It is not going to go well. It is like, is like me playing volleyball against you? I’ve played volleyball before. I have a volleyball. My daughter loves volleyball. You know, I’ve hit the ball with her back and forth. I played in in high school, I mean, you know, pick up games with, you know, or in college, or even law school, there’s a volleyball court right in front of her. If I played you in volleyball, it would be a disaster, you know, and so and so, it’s the same thing. Like these people do this all day, every day. The adjusters do it all day, every day. They understand the process. They know things that you don’t know. They know how things work that you don’t know. They can see things in medical records that you can’t see. They can see things in accident reports that you can’t see. You will see a series of numbers, you know. And they can see liability, causation, contributory negligence. They see dollar signs. They can see things. This thing makes the value go down. This thing makes the book of value go up. And their job is to pay you the least amount of the money they can pay you to go away. You know, my job, on the other hand, is to make sure that you get paid the fair value of what you should get paid, the most money that you could get paid under the circumstances. And so, you know, people don’t want to pay. People are like, Okay, well, I just want to pay for something I don’t need, and I get that, I would be exactly the same way I’m I am the same way, you know, but, but I know that, in my experience, I’m trying to think if there’s an exception to this rule. I cannot think of an exception to the rule that if you get an attorney who knows what that attorney is doing and is good at now, maybe if you got a real estate attorney and you work for an injury case and they you know, but, but if you got a personal injury attorney after a personal injury matter who was good and dedicated and did a good job. I can’t imagine a scenario where you, even after you paid for those for the attorneys fees, you wouldn’t be better off than if you then, if you didn’t do that, the only situation that comes to mind is where there is a there, where there’s a limit, in other words, where your damages are here and the policy limit is here and and there’s no way you’re ever gonna get more than that policy limit because the defendant doesn’t have any money. However, a lot of times we can find additional policies that if you didn’t come to us, we would never, in a million you would never, in a million years, know that this policies existed, and we can access those policies. And then, in addition, even if we can’t access those additional policies, we have the ability to negotiate down those medical bills and reduce the so every, every, every personal injury case is like a little business. It’s like, it’s like its own little business, right? And so what you want to be able to do with your business that is your. Personal injury case is to maximize the revenue and minimize the expenses. Now, the revenue is how much insurance company or insurance companies will pay you for your for your loss. The expenses are going to be how much you have to repay insurance companies or cost or attorneys or whatever. You know, everything is going to be out of that, out of those proceeds. So what we want to do is maximize the revenue and minimize the expenses. And so one of the ways that we can do that is we can negotiate down medical bills. And if a person has, you know, so for example, in an example I just gave you where a person has, in North Carolina, the minimum limits that you have to have on your car when you’re driving around is $30,000 every person has to have to have $30,000 coverage at least, or it’s against law. Well, if you have a wreck and somebody has $100,000 in damage and, and that claim is worth $100,000 and, but they only have $30,000 in limits. Now we got to satisfy $30,000 worth of bills well. So even in that situation where you don’t get where you know, where you might be tempted to go, Hey, I’m not going to get a lawyer. There’s not enough money. Enough money to pay for the bills, much less the lawyer. You still might be better off for the lawyer, because the lawyer might be able to reduce those medical but negotiate those medical bills down and put you in a position to be able to put money in your pocket, get your medical bills paid, get your medical bills released, so that you don’t owe any further medical bills, so those medical bills aren’t a lien against you for the rest of your days, you know, and so, and then also pay those legal fees. So it’s still under those circumstances, many times it’s better, better for you to have a professional, experienced, professional, personal injury law firm on your side. Thanks for joining us. Don’t forget to subscribe and follow us to stay up to date with our weekly episodes. We’ll see you next time you.
