Personal Injury law Forum

[Anonymous User]

Recent grad, no job as of now, although I have had some interviews and am waiting to hear back from a few places. My parents have a small personal injury firm that does fairly well which I am going to start working in.

My question is, long term, what is the outlook on this field? I have the option of eventually taking over the practice, but I've been hearing bad things about the future of personal injury law. Not sure if I should aggressively look for other work, or work in the family firm long-term.

[smallfirmassociate]

I would never want it to be my entire practice unless I both liked it and monopolized a substantial population base in that field. I get clients who bring in these cases, and I turn away probably 80% of them. The other 20%, however, can be surprisingly good cases. You can take a 1/3rd contingency fee and negotiate a settlement for $25k - $100k with a few letters and some copies of medical records, which is a nice payday for not much work. On the other hand, depending on the insurance company, you can get stuck going to trial and making little or nothing. The days of hitting settlements or jury verdicts well into the six figures for personal injury cases are all but gone. A judgment over $150k is a major exception to the rule. Nowadays, it's a volume business: find good cases and get them settled quickly.

It pays to have knowledge about insurance companies and to know how to vet out what constitutes a good case, because I would hate if my career depended on taking any substantial portion of those 80% of shit PI cases. And hate is not hyperbole. Reading medical records is miserable, as is negotiating with obstinate insurance companies. It might also help to become licensed in more than one state so you can chase the ambulances or whatever.

If you work for the PI firm for a bit, you may be able to parlay that into doing PI defense, not sure how hiring goes in that field. I have a friend who did PI defense for a long time, but she doesn't have much good to say about that either, TBH.

[Anonymous User]

I would never want it to be my entire practice unless I both liked it and monopolized a substantial population base in that field. I get clients who bring in these cases, and I turn away probably 80% of them. The other 20%, however, can be surprisingly good cases. You can take a 1/3rd contingency fee and negotiate a settlement for $25k - $100k with a few letters and some copies of medical records, which is a nice payday for not much work. On the other hand, depending on the insurance company, you can get stuck going to trial and making little or nothing. The days of hitting settlements or jury verdicts well into the six figures for personal injury cases are all but gone. A judgment over $150k is a major exception to the rule. Nowadays, it's a volume business: find good cases and get them settled quickly.

It pays to have knowledge about insurance companies and to know how to vet out what constitutes a good case, because I would hate if my career depended on taking any substantial portion of those 80% of shit PI cases. And hate is not hyperbole. Reading medical records is miserable, as is negotiating with obstinate insurance companies. It might also help to become licensed in more than one state so you can chase the ambulances or whatever.

If you work for the PI firm for a bit, you may be able to parlay that into doing PI defense, not sure how hiring goes at the insurance companies. I have a friend who did PI defense for a long time, but she doesn't have much good to say about that either, TBH.

The bolded isn't necessarily true. Once you go to a plaintiffs firm or start a career there, it will probably be very difficult to transition to defense side. I had a strong interest in plaintiffs work throughout law school but after countless informationals with defense attorneys, the general consensus seems to be that making the switch from defense firms to plaintiffs firms happens all the time, but the reverse isn't true. Plaintiffs firms work on a completely different business model than defense firms do, and the training you get at a plaintiffs firm is also very different. I literally had a firm partner tell me once that his firm's law clerks were more valuable to him than a plaintiffs attorney applying with several years of experience because it wasn't worth his time to retrain the plaintiffs lawyer.

[Anonymous User]

The days of hitting settlements or jury verdicts well into the six figures for personal injury cases are all but gone.

Why is this? I've definitely been hearing that its a lot harder to be successful in PI than it used to be, but I'm not sure whats driving that and if this trend will continue.

[smallfirmassociate]

The days of hitting settlements or jury verdicts well into the six figures for personal injury cases are all but gone.

Why is this? I've definitely been hearing that its a lot harder to be successful in PI than it used to be, but I'm not sure whats driving that and if this trend will continue.

As far as I can gather, it's just a cultural thing with juries. The law hasn't changed much. I've seen wrongful death judgments (including value of future estate plus loss of consortium) not reach six figures. There's been lots of press over the past 20 years or so about "Frivolous Suits" and "tort reform" and the like.

[XxSpyKEx]

I would never want it to be my entire practice unless I both liked it and monopolized a substantial population base in that field. I get clients who bring in these cases, and I turn away probably 80% of them. The other 20%, however, can be surprisingly good cases. You can take a 1/3rd contingency fee and negotiate a settlement for $25k - $100k with a few letters and some copies of medical records, which is a nice payday for not much work. On the other hand, depending on the insurance company, you can get stuck going to trial and making little or nothing. The days of hitting settlements or jury verdicts well into the six figures for personal injury cases are all but gone. A judgment over $150k is a major exception to the rule. Nowadays, it's a volume business: find good cases and get them settled quickly.

It pays to have knowledge about insurance companies and to know how to vet out what constitutes a good case, because I would hate if my career depended on taking any substantial portion of those 80% of shit PI cases. And hate is not hyperbole. Reading medical records is miserable, as is negotiating with obstinate insurance companies. It might also help to become licensed in more than one state so you can chase the ambulances or whatever.

If you work for the PI firm for a bit, you may be able to parlay that into doing PI defense, not sure how hiring goes in that field. I have a friend who did PI defense for a long time, but she doesn't have much good to say about that either, TBH.

Maybe the problem lies with you or your firm? There's a lot of PI firms, and attorneys at those firms, that make a killing still (like $5M+ /year). I don't think PI is going anywhere anytime soon (unlike some super niche practice areas). People are always going to do stupid shit and people are always going to get injured. Tort laws are more plaintiff favorable in some states than others, but overall, I don't see the practice area changing much over time. Obviously, your life will suck a lot more to be at a lower-end ambulance chasing law firm (which is probably 98% of all PI law firms) than it will to be at a good one that pulls in cases that hit multimillion dollar settlements and verdicts. But most of that is about your abilities as an PI attorney and the firm that you practice at more than the practice area as a whole.

[smallfirmassociate]

I would never want it to be my entire practice unless I both liked it and monopolized a substantial population base in that field. I get clients who bring in these cases, and I turn away probably 80% of them. The other 20%, however, can be surprisingly good cases. You can take a 1/3rd contingency fee and negotiate a settlement for $25k - $100k with a few letters and some copies of medical records, which is a nice payday for not much work. On the other hand, depending on the insurance company, you can get stuck going to trial and making little or nothing. The days of hitting settlements or jury verdicts well into the six figures for personal injury cases are all but gone. A judgment over $150k is a major exception to the rule. Nowadays, it's a volume business: find good cases and get them settled quickly.

It pays to have knowledge about insurance companies and to know how to vet out what constitutes a good case, because I would hate if my career depended on taking any substantial portion of those 80% of shit PI cases. And hate is not hyperbole. Reading medical records is miserable, as is negotiating with obstinate insurance companies. It might also help to become licensed in more than one state so you can chase the ambulances or whatever.

If you work for the PI firm for a bit, you may be able to parlay that into doing PI defense, not sure how hiring goes in that field. I have a friend who did PI defense for a long time, but she doesn't have much good to say about that either, TBH.

Maybe the problem lies with you or your firm? There's a lot of PI firms, and attorneys at those firms, that make a killing still (like $5M+ /year). I don't think PI is going anywhere anytime soon (unlike some super niche practice areas). People are always going to do stupid shit and people are always going to get injured. Tort laws are more plaintiff favorable in some states than others, but overall, I don't see the practice area changing much over time. Obviously, your life will suck a lot more to be at a lower-end ambulance chasing law firm (which is probably 98% of all PI law firms) than it will to be at a good one that pulls in cases that hit multimillion dollar settlements and verdicts. But most of that is about your abilities as an PI attorney and the firm that you practice at more than the practice area as a whole.

Let's focus on giving OP useful information. It's nonsensical to imply that me / my firm have a "problem," then acknowledge that 98% of PI firms don't do very well. We don't have a problem, because we don't do much PI. We don't do much PI because it's not very profitable. We USED to do quite a bit, in the 80's and early 90's, and we had several high-six and some seven-figure settlements and verdicts back in those days. Off the top of my head, I think we've had two PI cases over $200k in damages in the past three years, one for barely that and one for $1m. Both went to trial. And the $1m one had a med mal component that heavily contributed to damages.

I'm sure there are some firms that do very well, and I would also bet those firms met the criteria in the post you quoted that you seem to have glossed over: they either dominate a good-sized market or have a large market share in a primary market.

In other words, despite the unnecessarily childish tone of your post, it seems we agree that the vast majority of PI firms aren't engaged in a particularly lucrative practice, and that those few firms that dominate a (sizable) market can do well.

[Anonymous User]

The line about six-figure verdicts/settlements being "all but gone" is baseless and easily falsifiable. Most of those cases go to a few top firms, but I'm not sure if that's a change from the conditions of the past.

That said, I haven't heard too much about the field to recommend it.

[smallfirmassociate]

The line about six-figure verdicts/settlements being "all but gone" is baseless and easily falsifiable.

Perhaps it's hyperbole, but big verdicts are definitely the exception. A quick scour of the internet gives the following info:

- Plaintiffs win just 48% of personal cases tried to jury, nationwide.
- When plaintiffs do win, the median personal injury verdict is $40,000.
- (How much of that median $40,000 verdict is against a defendant with pockets is another question altogether, if you want to get your attorney fees.)

I don't know about other folks' practices, but it's not worth my time to prepare for a trial, line up experts, take part in a multi-day trial for a 48% chance to win a $40k verdict, and then have to enforce the judgment. That means each suit is worth less than $20k, and if 20% of defendants are judgment-proof, then those cases are worth $16k, which puts real (collectible) attorney fees at $5k per case. And if you're paying an expert witness, your client is getting jack shit out of the deal and destroying your reputation to everyone he knows, even if you win.

The nationwide medians are inflated by insurance regulations in several states (like in NY, where you can't sue for less than $50k from an auto accident, or in Florida where you can't sue for minor injuries in car accidents). Consider in Texas the median personal injury award is $12,000. That's if you win. Keep in mind that these median awards directly affect what insurance companies offer in settlement. Unless you've got a severed spinal cord on a profitable young person, they're gonna be offering you peanuts, if they make a settlement offer at all.

So we can play fuck-fuck games with rhetoric about whether the $100k judgments are truly "all but gone," but the data speaks for itself. You can go on firms' sites who do PI cases all day, every day, and they have some seven-figure verdicts, but they're also bragging about verdicts for $400k - $500k like they are career highlights. A $1m verdict may sound like a lot to a law student, but if you've got 7-8 attorneys doing PI full time, and you're popping the occasional $1m verdict and splitting $333k in atty fees 7-8 ways, it's basically chump change compared to just having a normal, robust practice. Especially considering that if you're litigating all the time, you're paying a shit ton for assistants, paralegals, and costs of discovery. So you won a huge judgment! Yay! Now let's pay overhead! Crunch some numbers aaaannnnnnd...every partner gets $20k. Riveting. At least you can put it on the website to impress people, I guess.

Any firm that makes a great living off of PI cases is the exception, not the rule, and it's not realistic for a new lawyer to expect to replicate that success. This is what OP should know, not that there are a few specialty unicorn firms that still make a killing off of PI.

edit: Sorry, that was more hostile than I intended. This thread just reeks of cognitive dissonance of law students who don't know what the hell they are talking about. I disagree with any implication that PI used to be the province of a few select firms. I've spoken to a lot of general practice attorneys who will say PI used to be a solid part of their work but that is no longer the case. Frankly, the fact that PI used to be profitable and isn't that good these days isn't even a controversial topics among attorneys in practice.

[wildcatatpenn]

The line about six-figure verdicts/settlements being "all but gone" is baseless and easily falsifiable.

Perhaps it's hyperbole, but big verdicts are definitely the exception. A quick scour of the internet gives the following info:

- Plaintiffs win just 48% of personal cases tried to jury, nationwide.
- When plaintiffs do win, the median personal injury verdict is $40,000.
- (How much of that median $40,000 verdict is against a defendant with pockets is another question altogether, if you want to get your attorney fees.)

I don't know about other folks' practices, but it's not worth my time to prepare for a trial, line up experts, take part in a multi-day trial for a 48% chance to win a $40k verdict, and then have to enforce the judgment. That means each suit is worth less than $20k, and if 20% of defendants are judgment-proof, then those cases are worth $16k, which puts real (collectible) attorney fees at $5k per case. And if you're paying an expert witness, your client is getting jack shit out of the deal and destroying your reputation to everyone he knows, even if you win.

The nationwide medians are inflated by insurance regulations in several states (like in NY, where you can't sue for less than $50k from an auto accident, or in Florida where you can't sue for minor injuries in car accidents). Consider in Texas the median personal injury award is $12,000. That's if you win. Keep in mind that these median awards directly affect what insurance companies offer in settlement. Unless you've got a severed spinal cord on a profitable young person, they're gonna be offering you peanuts, if they make a settlement offer at all.

So we can play fuck-fuck games with rhetoric about whether the $100k judgments are truly "all but gone," but the data speaks for itself. You can go on firms' sites who do PI cases all day, every day, and they have some seven-figure verdicts, but they're also bragging about verdicts for $400k - $500k like they are career highlights. A $1m verdict may sound like a lot to a law student, but if you've got 7-8 attorneys doing PI full time, and you're popping the occasional $1m verdict and splitting $333k in atty fees 7-8 ways, it's basically chump change compared to just having a normal, robust practice. Especially considering that if you're litigating all the time, you're paying a shit ton for assistants, paralegals, and costs of discovery. So you won a huge judgment! Yay! Now let's pay overhead! Crunch some numbers aaaannnnnnd...every partner gets $20k. Riveting. At least you can put it on the website to impress people, I guess.

Any firm that makes a great living off of PI cases is the exception, not the rule, and it's not realistic for a new lawyer to expect to replicate that success. This is what OP should know, not that there are a few specialty unicorn firms that still make a killing off of PI.

edit: Sorry, that was more hostile than I intended. This thread just reeks of cognitive dissonance of law students who don't know what the hell they are talking about. I disagree with any implication that PI used to be the province of a few select firms. I've spoken to a lot of general practice attorneys who will say PI used to be a solid part of their work but that is no longer the case. Frankly, the fact that PI used to be profitable and isn't that good these days isn't even a controversial topics among attorneys in practice.

ty bro never stop writing posts here pls!

I've always thought small firm law seems like a lot of fun, minus the pay versus hours anyways...

ive figure pi would be a reasonable way to make end's meat if u end up fucked but reasonable good people person (to get clts).. just curious, do you know what the #s were in the past? What you say makes sense, but I'd still be curious to see it.

I also figure if you manage to get a good stream of clients coming, there should be pretty low overhead on finagling settlements for BS claims to make at least liveable $

[Johann]

I worked in a PI firm for a couple years and never saw one judgement that wasn't collectible. There is always someone to sue. A 2 man shop can easily settle 20 cases a year. If you have the client base to do PI, it's the highest rate of return in law.

Edit - always someone to sue who is insured.

[XxSpyKEx]

I would never want it to be my entire practice unless I both liked it and monopolized a substantial population base in that field. I get clients who bring in these cases, and I turn away probably 80% of them. The other 20%, however, can be surprisingly good cases. You can take a 1/3rd contingency fee and negotiate a settlement for $25k - $100k with a few letters and some copies of medical records, which is a nice payday for not much work. On the other hand, depending on the insurance company, you can get stuck going to trial and making little or nothing. The days of hitting settlements or jury verdicts well into the six figures for personal injury cases are all but gone. A judgment over $150k is a major exception to the rule. Nowadays, it's a volume business: find good cases and get them settled quickly.

It pays to have knowledge about insurance companies and to know how to vet out what constitutes a good case, because I would hate if my career depended on taking any substantial portion of those 80% of shit PI cases. And hate is not hyperbole. Reading medical records is miserable, as is negotiating with obstinate insurance companies. It might also help to become licensed in more than one state so you can chase the ambulances or whatever.

If you work for the PI firm for a bit, you may be able to parlay that into doing PI defense, not sure how hiring goes in that field. I have a friend who did PI defense for a long time, but she doesn't have much good to say about that either, TBH.

Maybe the problem lies with you or your firm? There's a lot of PI firms, and attorneys at those firms, that make a killing still (like $5M+ /year). I don't think PI is going anywhere anytime soon (unlike some super niche practice areas). People are always going to do stupid shit and people are always going to get injured. Tort laws are more plaintiff favorable in some states than others, but overall, I don't see the practice area changing much over time. Obviously, your life will suck a lot more to be at a lower-end ambulance chasing law firm (which is probably 98% of all PI law firms) than it will to be at a good one that pulls in cases that hit multimillion dollar settlements and verdicts. But most of that is about your abilities as an PI attorney and the firm that you practice at more than the practice area as a whole.

Let's focus on giving OP useful information. It's nonsensical to imply that me / my firm have a "problem," then acknowledge that 98% of PI firms don't do very well. We don't have a problem, because we don't do much PI. We don't do much PI because it's not very profitable. We USED to do quite a bit, in the 80's and early 90's, and we had several high-six and some seven-figure settlements and verdicts back in those days. Off the top of my head, I think we've had two PI cases over $200k in damages in the past three years, one for barely that and one for $1m. Both went to trial. And the $1m one had a med mal component that heavily contributed to damages.

I'm sure there are some firms that do very well, and I would also bet those firms met the criteria in the post you quoted that you seem to have glossed over: they either dominate a good-sized market or have a large market share in a primary market.

In other words, despite the unnecessarily childish tone of your post, it seems we agree that the vast majority of PI firms aren't engaged in a particularly lucrative practice, and that those few firms that dominate a (sizable) market can do well.

True. But basically what it comes down to is your skills as an attorney and your ability to work for a lucrative PI firm, which isn't all that dissimilar from most other practice areas. For example, if you work at some shitlaw small firm that does small time blue-collar criminal work and handles low-end white collar cases (e.g. low level food stamp fraud, etc), you're not going to be very successful. On the other hand, if you work at a top white collar shop (either in biglaw or a boutique), you're making money. Just because there's a million and a half small criminal law firms that do bullshit low-end white collar work, doesn't mean the future for practicing in white collar criminal law is declining. This is different than a practice area where the work is drying up (e.g. if you want to do class actions and then SCOTUS released its decision that seriously limits class actions).

[XxSpyKEx]

The line about six-figure verdicts/settlements being "all but gone" is baseless and easily falsifiable.

Perhaps it's hyperbole, but big verdicts are definitely the exception. A quick scour of the internet gives the following info:

- Plaintiffs win just 48% of personal cases tried to jury, nationwide.
- When plaintiffs do win, the median personal injury verdict is $40,000.
- (How much of that median $40,000 verdict is against a defendant with pockets is another question altogether, if you want to get your attorney fees.)

I don't know about other folks' practices, but it's not worth my time to prepare for a trial, line up experts, take part in a multi-day trial for a 48% chance to win a $40k verdict, and then have to enforce the judgment. That means each suit is worth less than $20k, and if 20% of defendants are judgment-proof, then those cases are worth $16k, which puts real (collectible) attorney fees at $5k per case. And if you're paying an expert witness, your client is getting jack shit out of the deal and destroying your reputation to everyone he knows, even if you win.

The nationwide medians are inflated by insurance regulations in several states (like in NY, where you can't sue for less than $50k from an auto accident, or in Florida where you can't sue for minor injuries in car accidents). Consider in Texas the median personal injury award is $12,000. That's if you win. Keep in mind that these median awards directly affect what insurance companies offer in settlement. Unless you've got a severed spinal cord on a profitable young person, they're gonna be offering you peanuts, if they make a settlement offer at all.

So we can play fuck-fuck games with rhetoric about whether the $100k judgments are truly "all but gone," but the data speaks for itself. You can go on firms' sites who do PI cases all day, every day, and they have some seven-figure verdicts, but they're also bragging about verdicts for $400k - $500k like they are career highlights. A $1m verdict may sound like a lot to a law student, but if you've got 7-8 attorneys doing PI full time, and you're popping the occasional $1m verdict and splitting $333k in atty fees 7-8 ways, it's basically chump change compared to just having a normal, robust practice. Especially considering that if you're litigating all the time, you're paying a shit ton for assistants, paralegals, and costs of discovery. So you won a huge judgment! Yay! Now let's pay overhead! Crunch some numbers aaaannnnnnd...every partner gets $20k. Riveting. At least you can put it on the website to impress people, I guess.

Any firm that makes a great living off of PI cases is the exception, not the rule, and it's not realistic for a new lawyer to expect to replicate that success. This is what OP should know, not that there are a few specialty unicorn firms that still make a killing off of PI.

edit: Sorry, that was more hostile than I intended. This thread just reeks of cognitive dissonance of law students who don't know what the hell they are talking about. I disagree with any implication that PI used to be the province of a few select firms. I've spoken to a lot of general practice attorneys who will say PI used to be a solid part of their work but that is no longer the case. Frankly, the fact that PI used to be profitable and isn't that good these days isn't even a controversial topics among attorneys in practice.

All you've shown is that most PI verdicts are for not very much. But it doesn't prove that big verdicts were once the norm, that now they are not, and that PI is a dying practice area, as you're trying to do with this dissertation that you posted. Frankly, I don't think that PI was ever lucrative enough where more than a few firms were making a killing doing it. The bottom line is that you can do well in PI, but it all depends on your abilities as a jury trial attorney and your ability to get into one of the lucrative PI firms, which I think we are in agreement about.

[r6_philly]

#1 thing about PI is getting clients. If you can get clients you will do well. Skills help of course, but only to the extend that help you get clients. You can settle most insurance claims, if you feel that you might not win at trial settle for less. No one knows how much a case is worth before you take the client so as long as you can retain them you are going to do okay.

It's not impossible to make a good living without going to trial ever because you can always refer them out. In PA you can get paid referral too.

[XxSpyKEx]

Firms that can show that they've earned billions in verdicts across the past X years, with multiple 7 figure verdicts each year, tend to be a revolving door with clients. Everyone want these few top dog attorneys to represent them. Most of them wind up getting referred out (for a fee, of course, in states where it's allowed). I guess the alternative is to win a couple really big cases and advertise on TV nonstop. That'll get you clients as well.

[LP2215]

I work for a large plaintiff's firm that does a solid amount of PI work. There is still a lot of money in PI and I have seen many million dollar cases. The problem, like others have said, is only a couple of firms get most of the good cases due to advertising expenses, etc. Additionally, the upfront cost of trying a case worth a lot of money can be extremely high depending on the experts and other expenses associated with the case.