No, Attorneys Don’t Have Actual Win-Loss Records

If you are looking for an injury attorney, it may seem like it makes sense to ask how often the attorney you are considering wins his or her cases. That temptation can be even greater nowadays, with so many attorneys advertising compensation that they won for clients, or how many wins that they have.

But before you are swayed by a won-loss record, or a billboard where an attorney says that he or she “always wins,” think again. Because law is not sports—it isn’t really accurate to tout a won-loss record.

How Do You Measure Settlements?

Most injury cases do not go to trial. They will settle before they go to trial. This makes the idea of discussing won-loss records even more useless. How do you measure whether a settlement was a win or a loss?

Even if a case does go all the way to trial, what happens at trial, isn’t always a clear cut win or loss. Yes, the jury may have found the Defendant negligent for injuring you. But if the jury only gives you 10%, 50% or 80% of what you believe your total compensation for your injuries should have been, how do you know if you’ve won or you’ve lost?

Difficult Cases

Making matters more complex is that won loss records are deceptive because in many cases attorneys will take very difficult cases. Many injury cases are new, novel, and untested.

Remember that at one point, it was foolish to sue for asbestos poisoning, or to sue for nicotine addiction. Today it’s accepted, because attorneys challenged the norm, and lost some, but eventually, started winning these kinds of cases.

Attorneys who take these very difficult cases may have more losses, because they aren’t “easy” cases. But that doesn’t make the attorney any less qualified—quite the opposite. Still, an attorney who touts how much he or she wins cases, may be doing so because the attorney is only taking cases that do not present a significant challenge.

Out of Your Hands?

As your attorney will discuss with you when and if it gets to the point where you are going to make a decision about whether to take your case all the way to trial, cases and trials are uncertain.

Your case may depend on a third party witness, who may not do the best job at trial. Success may depend on a doctor giving an explanation to the jury, and that doctor may not do the best job doing that.

The point is that we do not always control every aspect of a trial. Losing at trial is not always a product of something an attorney did or did not do.

Of course, you can and should ask generally about results that an attorney obtains or has obtained for prior clients. But in doing so, ask more about client satisfaction—not about whether the attorney “wins” cases.

Ask us about how we help clients who are injured in accidents. Contact our Rhode Island personal injury lawyers at Robert E. Craven & Associates at 401-453-2700 today.

Source:

forbes.com/advisor/legal/personal-injury/personal-injury-settlement-amounts/