As experienced personal injury lawyers, we know how to maximize the compensation you receive for your car wreck, defective product, or slip and fall injury case.  But all too often, our clients accidentally do things that can jeopardize the case or undermine our efforts.  Here are some tips on what you can do to make sure your personal injury case goes well:

1. Seek medical treatment for all of your injuries as soon as possible.  If you don’t seek medical treatment and chose to suffer through the natural healing process alone, the insurance adjusters will presume that you were not really injured in the accident.
2. If you have insurance, use the doctors in your network.  Insurance adjusters are skeptical of medical bills incurred at certain injury clinics with reputations for over-treatment.
3. Follow your doctor’s instructions to the letter – show up for all recommended therapy sessions, and don’t skip the follow-up appointments, even when you think your injuries from your accident are healing correctly.  Your doctor may see something that you miss that requires additional treatment.  But from the legal aspect, insurance adjusters may assume that patients who don’t follow through with therapy and follow-up appointments weren’t injured in the first place.
4. Be sure to tell your doctor about every injury and every limitation that you are experiencing after your car wreck or accident.  The doctors put these things in their notes, and if one aspect of an injury is not in the doctor’s records, the insurance adjusters and defense attorneys will assume that any later claim describing that injury is something that your personal injury lawyer fabricated.
5. Take pictures of your injuries, and document the healing process with pictures and diary notes.  Once bruises and scars heal, it is difficult to prove the severity of your injuries.  A picture is truly worth a thousand words.
6. Make your Facebook, Twitter, and other social network profiles private, and don’t post any comments about your injury or your case. The defense lawyers will check to see what is posted.  If you use your Facebook page to assure your friends that you are all right after a car wreck, the defense lawyers will twist that upbeat, friendly message to mean that you were not really injured.
7. Keep your lawyer informed of everything – changes in your medical treatment, changes in your ability to work, or changes in your physical condition after the accident.
8. Forward any documents to your personal injury attorney right away.  This includes accident reports, letters from insurance companies, doctor’s bills, and payroll check stubs that show you lost income while you were unable to work because of your accident.
9. Be candid with your lawyer.  Tell them about prior lawsuits, previous injuries, or other legal problems you might have experienced in the past.
10. Save evidence that might be relevant to your personal injury case.  In a slip and fall case, set aside the shoes that you were wearing.  In any defective product case, save the product that caused your injury, as well as any packaging or receipts from when you purchased it.  In car wreck cases, take pictures of the damage to the cars, and of the location where the accident happened.

If you follow these easy steps, the personal injury lawyers at Powers Taylor can handle the rest.