Do I Need a Lawyer when My Injuries Are Minor?

It may be tempting to proceed with negotiating with the insurance company on your own because your injuries seem to be minor. Doing so can be a serious mistake.

For instance, when you suffer whiplash in a rear-ender accident, the actual symptoms may not appear for days or even weeks later. In the meantime, you might struggle with some amount of neck pain that you believe is not serious enough to bother about. In many, injuries, symptoms do not make their presence felt for weeks later. One prime example is whiplash, but there are several injuries in which the extent of the injury can become evident only weeks later.

Even if your injuries are what you consider to be minor, they may have long-term consequences that you may not have completely appreciated. Say, for instance, that you have suffered a finger injury in an accident. You may believe that since it is a simple finger injury, you do not require an attorney to negotiate a settlement for you because the injury will heal quickly, and you can continue working as you did before.

That however, may not be how things turn out for you. If your job currently consists of manual tasks, or tasks in which you use your hands or fingers very often, then you may find that the finger fracture now limits your ability to perform the same tasks that you were performing. That immediately impacts your ability to earn an income, and could even determine whether you are able to return to the same job that you did before. These are questions that you may consider after an accident, and these are issues that you must resolve before you agree to any kind of settlement with the insurer.