Which injury lawyer should you not hire?

There are hundreds or even thousands of injury lawyers in any given area in California and the rest of the country. However, the reality is that few of them provide good service and legal representation.
While some lawyers are simply not competent to handle your injury case, competence, experience, and proven track record of success do not mean that this is the right lawyer for you. Successful lawyers are often very busy, too busy, and handle more work than they can or should be handling. The wonderful skills and qualities of a very successful lawyer will have little use and benefit to you and your case if it takes that lawyer weeks or even months to handle a matter or return your phone call. While it is impossible to assess the prospective quality of representation that you are going to receive  when you contact an injury lawyer or any other attorney, there are at least "red flags" that you should be paying special attention to and which indicate that he might just not be the right lawyer for you: 

1. It takes the lawyer longer than one week to return your call even though he is not at trial and not taking depositions. If the lawyer is not eager to have your business before you even enter into an agreement, imagine how hard he will be to get a hold of once he starts representing you. 

2. The lawyer tells you exactly how much he is going to recover for your injury. It is great to be confident in your skill and knowledge. However, every competent lawyer knows that the law is by nature unpredictable, and so many unexpected circumstances arise during representation which may substantially increase or reduce the value of any case. Thus, you should be very skeptical of an attorney who makes absolutely statements about something that no one can ever be sure of. The most any lawyer should guarantee is that he will do the best job he can for you and that he will work hard to obtain a fair recovery for you.

3. When you ask the lawyer what areas of law he practices in, he says that he runs "general practice" or he does "everything." This is a first glaring sign of a lawyer's potential incompetence. Every area of law is complex - more complex than most people think, and it requires in-depth focus, knowledge and specialization. A lawyer who "dabbles" into the injury law not only doesn't know some of the essential aspects of representing injured persons, but he is likely to not even be aware of what he doesn't know. This will likely adversely affect an injured person's ability to recover fair settlement.