Why so many attorneys decide to get into personal injury law
If you decide you want to sue someone, you probably won’t have trouble finding a personal injury lawyer unless you live somewhere extremely remote.
If you live in any decent-sized city, though, you can probably find a dozen within driving distance. Personal injury law attracts many individuals fresh out of law school, and some stay in that niche for their entire careers.
You might wonder about that. After all, the average personal injury lawyer makes $73K per year. That’s decent money, but it’s not enough to make someone wealthy.
In this article, we’ll talk about some of the reasons why so many lawyers get into personal injury law.
The potential profits
While the average personal injury lawyer doesn’t even make six figures per year before taxes, some of them make a lot more than that. The top personal injury lawyers, whether they like to argue on a defendant’s behalf or a plaintiff’s, can make much more than the national average if they take the right kinds of cases.
In personal injury law, much like any other aspect of the legal field, you have middle-of-the-road individuals who do a good job but don’t make much money, and then you have superstars. If you belong to this latter category, you can sell your services to whomever bids the highest. You might charge hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars per hour for the time you dedicate to each case.
Some lawyers enjoy arguing in court
Some lawyers also want to get into an area of the law where they can argue in court. Not every personal injury case will get to this point. In fact, it’s relatively rare that one does.
Usually, the defendant will make a settlement offer at some point unless they feel they can win their case if it goes to a jury’s verdict. If you look at the situation from a lawyer’s standpoint, though, they might see a lot to like about either scenario.
Say you’re a lawyer who represents plaintiffs in personal injury cases. If you take on a case, you and your firm can investigate what happened. If you uncover enough evidence, then you can present what you found to the defendant’s legal team during the discovery phase of the trial.
If your investigators found plenty of credible evidence, that should force a settlement offer. If your client accepts it, you will get usually get anywhere from 25%-40% of the settlement via your contingency fee. If the defendant doesn’t feel like you collected enough evidence, though, and they want to fight the matter out in court instead, you might relish that prospect just as much.
Now, you get a chance to dress yourself in your best attire, fix yourself up, and argue on your client’s behalf in front of a judge and jury. At these moments, you’re the center of attention, and some lawyers love that. Many individuals who spent time on high school debate teams end up as personal injury lawyers.
If you have enough confidence in yourself and your abilities, this branch of the law might seem like the perfect way for you to make your money.
Others like getting justice for people
Some lawyers get into the personal injury niche not so much for the money but because they like defending people who seem to really need it. Sometimes, if you get into personal injury law, a potential plaintiff will come to you with their life in tatters. Maybe a product hurt them badly, and they want to seek compensation from the company that made it.
If so, you can stand up for their rights in court. If you don’t do it, then who will? For many personal injury lawyers, there’s nobility in what they do. They feel good about themselves when they go to bed at night because they spend their time standing up for the underdogs, the downtrodden of society who don’t ever seem to get a fair chance in life.
The fame of large cases attracts some lawyers
While some attorneys get into personal injury law for the money, and others for the good feeling they get if they win a case for a long-shot client, others want the fame. Think about lawyers who win personal injury cases for their clients when they go up against large corporations represented by prestigious law firms.
In these cases, a lawyer may feel like they’re in the middle of a John Grisham novel. If they win, they might get a significant chunk of money via their contingency fee, but it’s more about having all of the cameras on them.
If you win several high-profile cases in the personal injury niche, you can start your own firm and have other lawyers flock to you because they know you’re a proven winner. You can also join your choice of high-end firms if that’s more appealing.
They can sign on with big firms
That leads us to our final point about why some attorneys seek out the personal injury law niche. If you want fame and fortune, part of that usually involves associating yourself with one of the big names in the industry. Just like you’ll find certain brand names dominating every niche, it’s the same with the law.
If you can prove you’re a winner when you represent either plaintiffs or defendants, you’ll likely attract the attention of the world’s largest and most prestigious firms. Maybe that’s why you got into this aspect of the law.
You wanted to become a partner and to sit at the big table. You wanted to reach the highest echelons of the industry and to see your name on the building when you come in to work every morning.
Not many make it to that point, but the best ones do. You must have the utmost confidence in yourself to reach that stage, though. That’s why most personal injury lawyers do fine for themselves without ever becoming household names.
