When you hire a personal injury lawyer to pursue your legal claim to financial compensation, you’re making the conscious decision to have a legal advocate whose job it is to look out for you. Insurance companies don’t always play fair. Your personal injury lawyer handles communication with the insurance company and obtaining your personal injury settlement, so that you can focus on getting well and putting your life back on track.

Most personal injury claims start with the settlement process. Settling is often much less expensive, less stressful, and less time consuming than going to court. If there’s not a successful settlement made before trial, it could still take place while the trial is on-going.

As personal injury lawyers, one of the most common questions we receive from clients is, “How much will my personal injury settlement be?”.  Although a variety of factors influence the likely settlement value, you can estimate it by:

• Adding up the total economic damages (e.g., medical bills, lost wages);
• Multiplying that figure by 1.5 to 5, depending on aggravating factors associated with your case (e.g., if you were hit by a drunk driver); and,
• Capping it at the policy limit involved (e.g., the minimum $30k/$60k policy in Texas).

Because it’s such a common question, we decided to share this information with our readers and will explain in more detail below. By the end of this post, we hope that you feel more educated and prepared to enter the settlement process. If you need help, contact the personal injury lawyers at Thompson Law. We offer free initial consultations.

Determining Your Damages

Personal injury claims rely on negligence. For a victim to be eligible for compensation, they must be able to prove that the other involved party was negligent in some way and that the negligence caused the victim an actual injury. The injury can be physical, mental, or even be damage to property. As we go through this post and see the word “injury,” keep in mind that we’re using it to encompass those three components.

Generally, you and your personal injury lawyer will use the damages formula to determine a starting point for the settlement process. Victims may be eligible to receive compensation for medical care and related expenses, lost income, pain and physical suffering, permanent disability, disfigurement, loss of quality of life, and emotional suffering. As you may have noticed, a couple of items on that list can be fairly subjective. It can be hard to place monetary worth on how the accident affected your personal life or your mental health. Yet, that’s why the damage formula is used.

First, you take the numbers you know you do have. Those are generally the amount spent for medical care and related expenses, lost income, and whether you’ll ever be able to work again or if the work you can do now is drastically different from your line of work before the accident.

Second, take the total and multiply it by 1.5 to 5. Although the number will sometimes be higher than 5, it is most often no higher than that. That’s how you come up with a requested settlement amount that includes compensation for those items that are hard to put a dollar value on.

It’s important for you to understand the formula because insurance companies won’t go out of their way to explain the process to you. Additionally, you or your personal injury lawyer aren’t under any obligation to explain how you developed your settlement amount, either.

Of course, there are additional adjustments for dealing with extremely painful injuries, long-term medical treatment, and how permanent (and visible) the injury is.

Insurance Limits Can Affect the Settlement Process

It is often the insurance company that offers the settlement. Insurance policies have limits. So, the settlement may be affected by the insurance limit. If your settlement amount is over that limit, they may try to negotiate it down to the limit or you may have the right to accept the policy limit, release the insurance company from further liability, and sue the insured directly for the rest of the money.

Need Help Negotiating Your Personal Injury Settlement?

Thompson Law is a team of experienced personal injury lawyers with serious and effective negotiation skills in obtaining maximum value for personal injury settlements. If you need help with a personal injury claim, call us now at 844-308-8180. The call and the consultation are free.