Every injury attorney uses the familiar advertising slogan: “no fee until we collect.” It’s true that personal injury attorneys generally do not charge clients anything upfront. The problem is that the fee they charge at the end of the case is extremely high.

Consider a simple car accident settlement for $30,000. The attorney will charge $10,000 (1/3 of the settlement). There are a lot of car accident claims that settle for $100,000 without the attorney doing much work at all, but the attorney will still charge $33,333!

Sometimes a 1/3 fee is fair. But in a simple case you might be better off paying an attorney for his time rather than paying a full 1/3 at the time of settlement.

We’ve seen a lot of personal injury attorneys raise their rates recently from the standard 33% of the settlement to 40% or more. Frankly, we’re not sure if it’s due to the economy or just greed.

Leave a comment and let us know how much your attorney is charging.

You may have noticed some interruptions over the past couple of weeks to our free car accident application. We are in the process of making some major improvements to the app. While we’re extremely excited about the improvements, we realize that the upgrades may have inconvenienced some of our users. If you have experienced any problems with our service and need some help with your auto insurance claim, please feel free to contact us.

Thank you for your understanding,

The eCarCrash Team

Insurance companies are never eager to pay out money. But they are especially tightfisted in bad economic times like these. Insurance companies are scrutinizing claims more then ever before. They are denying claims that aren’t well-documented or aren’t consistently followed up.

Make sure you protect your car accident claim. Have all of your accident and injury information well-documented and organized. And hold the adjuster’s feet to the fire by following up on your claims status on a weekly basis.

Have a story about a car insurance company giving you a hard time with your claim, tell us about it.

During difficult economic times like these, one of the first things people cut back on is their car insurance coverage. Drivers may lower their coverage limits, or drop their auto insurance all together.

If you happen to get into a car accident with someone who doesn’t have coverage or doesn’t have enough insurance to cover your injuries, you may be in trouble. When the at-fault driver doesn’t have enough insurance, you may have to pay for losses you have from the accident – including medical costs.

But there is a way to protect yourself from drivers that don’t have enough insurance. When you purchase your car insurance make sure that you have uninsured / underinsured motorist coverage, otherwise known as “UM/UIM” coverage. UM/UIM insurance coverage is added to your standard insurance policy. If you’re injured by a driver who doesn’t have enough coverage, your UM/UIM coverage will step in and make up the difference between the other driver’s policy limit and your UM/UIM limit. It’s generally a good idea to make sure your UM/UIM limits match your bodily injury coverage.

Making claims under your UM/UIM policy can be confusing, but our free online insurance claim program automates the process of making a UM/UIM claim.

If you’ve been in a car accident you’ve probably had the experience of an insurance company trying to rush you into accepting a settlement. So what’s the rush?

Basically, the insurance company doesn’t want to be on the hook for your future damages. When you settle your claim you’ll sign a release. This will end any liability the insurance company has – even if it turns out you need further medical treatment. So the insurance company wants to settle the case quickly and cut off any liability it may have if you happen to need further medical treatment.

So before you settle your claim make sure you have finished all of your medical treatment. If you know that you’ll need future medical treatment, your injury is probably serious enough where you should contact a lawyer. But no matter how you decide to handle your claim, make sure you settle your claim or file a lawsuit before your statute of limitations ends.

Wondering if the insurance company’s settlement offer is fair?

For a quick answer try our free auto accident claim calculator. It will give you a general idea of how much your claim is worth.

Want a more detailed answer? No problem. Just contact us and tell us a little bit about your accident and injuries. We can typically respond within an hour with our free analysis of the value of your claim.

We’re also happy to answer any other questions you have about your claim. Your questions will be submitted to us securely, and we won’t share your information with anyone else.

So contact us today.

So after intensive negotiations, the insurance company is dug in. They’re offer is final. They’re not going to pay you any more for your injury.

Should you take their offer? Is that the best settlement you can get?

Consider for a moment how injury attorneys work. They negotiate with the insurance company, take 1/3 of the settlement, pay back their client’s medical bills, and still find some money to put in the client’s pocket. How do they do it? Where does that extra 1/3 that represents their fee come from?

One explanation is that they have experience dealing with insurance companies. True, but in simple auto claims attorneys can’t negotiate much better than you can. There’s just not a lot to talk about.

The real secret is that attorneys know that the negotiation with the auto insurance company is just the beginning of the process. Once they’ve gotten the best offer they can, a good attorney will negotiate to reduce the medical liens. Medical liens can come from medical providers that treated you or the health or auto insurance company that paid your medical bills. Liens are basically just bills that have to be paid back out of the lawsuit.

You can negotiate liens just like a lawyer.

There’s nothing stopping you from trying to get the lien holders to accept less than the amount that they paid just like a lawyer would do. And by the way, you can also negotiate your medical bills down even if they’re not liens. But why would a lien holder accept less? There are two reasons:

First, they’re use to accepting less than the full amount. It’s become standard in the medical field to bill more and expect that whoever is paying that bill will pay a small fraction of it. If you pay 2/3 of your bill, you’ve paying more than most people.

The second reason lienholders will take less is that they’re at risk. If you don’t recover on your case, the lienholders can’t collect on their lien. So they’re happy to cut their lien by 1/3 to eliminate the risk. Your conversation with them might go something like this: “I have an offer from the insurance company…it’s less than I was hoping for…if you can reduce your lien by 1/3 I think I could settle the case and avoid hiring a lawyer and going to trial. Most lien holders will accept 2/3 on the spot, without any further negotiation.

So when you settle your claim, spend a few extra minutes to negotiate to lower the amount you owe for your medical bills. Doing so should instantly increase your settlement by at least 1/3.

Immediately after your accident you can be sure that the other driver’s insurance company will contact you and ask for a recorded statement. Most people have heard the common advice that they shouldn’t give statements, but for some reason they agree anyways.

“I’m smart enough to talk my way through this,” they say to themselves. “I’ll make the insurance adjuster understand what really happened. I won’t say anything to hurt my claim.”

Sure.

No one sets out to destroy their claim, but they always end up doing so when they make a statement. Why? Because insurance adjusters are trained to destroy your claim. It doesn’t make them bad people. The fact is that their job is to pay you as little as possible for your injuries.

How does the statement hurt you?

When the adjuster asks you to give a statement, he or she will be very polite about it. They have a script that their working from that’s designed to get you to agree to give the statement. They know that if you give a statement they will get you to say at least a couple of things that they will be able to use against you.

Here’s one of the many real life example that we’ve seen:

Q: What speed were you traveling?
A: I don’t really know.

Now the adjuster has the foundation to claim this person was speeding. After making this innocent statement, this person will have a difficult time defending the claim that he was speeding – even though he actually wasn’t! After all, he doesn’t know.

In this case, the adjuster felt that this statement called for a 10% reduction in the damages this person was entitled to. Is that fair? Of course not. But that’s the reality of the auto insurance business.

This person didn’t set out to hurt his claim, yet he did so anyways. And don’t think that you wouldn’t fall for some of the same insurance trickery. After looking at hundreds of statements we have yet to see one that didn’t hurt the person making it in some way.

So please do not give a statement to the other insurance company.

The number one question we get at eCarCrash.com is: “how much is my claim worth?” We looked, but couldn’t find any good claim calculators to recommend; so we created our own.

We’re excited to announce the eCarCrash.com Car Accident Claim Calculator. Just enter the amount of your medical bills, lost wages, car repair, and other losses, and the calculator will give you a range of the settlement value of your insurance claim. The calculator determines the total value of your auto accident claim, including losses for your pain and suffering and disability.

Try it out and let us know what you think.

We still believe that every case presents a unique set of circumstances that make up the case’s true value. So if you want to get a personalized estimate of how much your claim is worth, contact us.