When someone has been injured and they contact us, the first thing they always need to understand and the first thing I always tell them is – this just depends on where they are on their treatment – you need to do what your doctors tell you to do. We’re not going to come in and try to recommend treatment. We’re not doctors. We don’t have any authority to recommend medical treatment.
The most important thing is to do what your doctor says.
That’s what I always say when we have the first initial contact. People are often confused, and I think sometimes clients get frustrated because they feel like even though sometimes it’s only been a couple of days or even weeks weeks since the incident happened, they’ve been living it and they feel like this has been going on for an eternity.
We have to sit down with them and say, “Look, right now, you’re in the beginning stages of this. This is going to be an ordeal. Right now, what you have to do is to do what your doctor says and what they’re recommending. Do what you need to get better. We’re going to handle everything.”
You can’t go in just initially guns blazing, so to speak, when the accident has just happened because we don’t know how hurt you are or what your treatment is going to be. Once the client has reached a point with their treatment where they’re either better, or unfortunately sometimes as good as they’re going to get and they have future treatment recommendations. That’s typically when we can start the process.
So, the number one thing is to just always do what your doctor says. Do your treatment, try to get better. Then once you get to a point where we can pursue litigation, we will. That’s what somebody needs to understand.
Trust is always the big thing. I get that, they’re coming in and they’re hurt, they’re stressed out, they’re missing work, and that’s the big deal that we as attorneys have to do, is let our client know that we’re going to handle this. They need to live their life and get better. Just let us handle it. That’s why they’ve hired us.
So, always do what the doctor says, and then just let us handle the legal stuff. That’s always our course of action, and that’s always in our initial interview, what we’ll tell you. I can’t imagine an instance where I would give different advice than that.
