hey everyone i'm mike dull i am a personal
injury lawyer based in halifax nova scotia been helping injured people get compensation for
wrongs under them for my entire career and in that capacity i've met a lot of people with a lot of
questions and today i'm going to be answering some of the basic questions that you should be asking
your personal injury lawyer if you'd like more information you can visit us at www.valentlegal.ca
or follow our instagram page also you can leave me any questions that you might have about an
injury claim in the comments down below and i'll do my best to answer them all right let's get
started and cover some of the basic questions that you should be asking your personal injury
lawyer the first question you should be asking your personal injury lawyer is as a basic one how
can you help me what value can you provide to to my claim it is you know the law in nova scotia
is such that you're entitled to compensation and so you know one of the first questions that
you should ask a personal injury lawyer if you sit down with him or her is how can you help me
are you going to add value to my claim that more than pays for the legal fees that you're going
to take at the end of the day the next question you should ask your lawyers how much is my case
worth it's important to understand going in where your areas of loss are and how might a lawyer be
able to help you prove those losses in a way that is going to convince you know maybe a hardened
insurance adjuster to issue you the best possible compensation available under the law insurance
adjusters are professional negotiators they can come off as quite nice and empathetic but their
job understand is to pay you as little as possible in exchange for your signature on a release and so
it's important when you sit down with a lawyer to have that frank conversation about here's the
impacts that this accident and these injuries have had in my life and have that lawyer explain to you
exactly the categories of loss that he or she is going to be able to help you prove and how he or
she is going to be able to go about proving it a question that is often asked by by my clients
is look if i settle right now what happens if i get worse what happens if there are injuries and
consequences of an accident that aren't known right now but will come to fruition after a
settlement it's a difficult question to answer but the approach that i take with my clients
is to encourage them to wait on a settlement until the future outcome the future consequences are
well known if you settle too early you run the risk of giving up your future rights in exchange
for settlement if things don't go the way you want them to go or expect them to go you want
to make sure that you're fairly compensated for those outcomes and at some point doctors are
able to comment on a balance of probabilities what the future holds for you and until doctors
are able to do that you don't want to be settling with an insurance company once you sign that
release you can't go back for more even if your injuries worsen the next question you should
ask your lawyer is i don't have health insurance i don't have health care who's going to pay for
my treatment the answer to that question really depends on how you were injured in nova scotia
if you're injured in a car accident you're entitled to insurance benefits that will help fund
recommended therapy if you're injured through any other means outside of a car accident the answer
isn't as simple unfortunately regardless of who pays for the treatment be yourself be
your private insurance blue cross for example or be it the government through publicly funded
medical care the insurance company responsible for compensating for the injuries as a whole is
ultimately responsible for reimbursing those costs so if you're out of pocket they'll pay
you back the amount of money you've spent on on your treatment if your private insurance
company is out of pocket funding your treatment then that insurance company has a right to claim
their losses from the insurance company of the person that caused your injuries in the first
place and somewhat surprisingly the government also has that right they can recoup the costs
that they have spent on doctors and therapists another question you might want to ask your
lawyer is you know will my case go to court it's a misconception for most folks that i talk to
that hiring a lawyer means you're going to trial and very few people want to find themselves in
trial but the reality is 95 percent of cases settle before trial right whether a case goes
to trial or not is ultimately your decision an insurance company will offer you a certain
amount of money you know with the help of a of a good experienced lawyer like us at valent
legal that sum of money hopefully is a really good sum of money that compensates you fully for
all your losses and the impacts that an accident and injuries may have had on your quality of life
but you may not find it to be a satisfactory sum of money and in those cases you have the right
to go to trial you have the right to have a judge tell all the parties how much compensation
you deserve but the decision is ultimately yours and we'll cover you know what goes into that
in another video good question is how long do cases typically take to settle the answer isn't
an easy one maybe it's unfair to say it depends but it depends on the nature of your
injuries the degree in which those injuries have impacted your life and frankly it can depend on
on the type of insurance adjuster that you have on the other side all those factors play into
the length of time it's going to take for you to get a settlement if your injuries resolve fully
within a year and your doctors are saying look you're out of the woods that's a case that should
be able to settle within about a year if you find yourself in an unfortunate situation where your
injuries persist after your year particularly where those injuries you know continue to impact
functioning it's going to take longer and that's because you know the value of your claim is
larger and insurance adjusters trying to keep as much money in their pockets as possible will
fight harder against your claim those are some answers to common questions that you should
be asking your personal injury lawyer it's my hope that these answers have been helpful to you
we'll be answering more questions in future videos
