It's common to be apprehensive when hiring a lawyer.
To make the process as easy as possible, ask your potential lawyer these few questions to ensure they are the right fit for you!
Transcription:
Hey everybody, this is disability attorney Michael Liner. Important video because one thing that I get asked by people from time to time, you know very often people come to us knowing that we are the best attorney to hire for their disability claim, but from time to time, people have questions you know and they wanna know how do I know that you are the best attorney to handle my disability case? So, you know and I think that it's it's good to question the attorney before you hire them. So, I've prepared a list questions that I think you should ask an attorney before hiring them. So here's the things that I think you should ask. First, I think that before hiring an attorney to represent you on your disability case, you should ask them how much of your practice is devoted to representing you know people before the social security administration - how much your practice is devoted to disability claims? If somebody's, you know only spending a quarter of their time on disability cases, that's probably somebody that's not gonna have the same understanding of the process as somebody that's you know, 100 percent of their practices is devoted to disability cases and similarly another important question to ask is, how much experience does the attorney or law firm have handling social security cases? Have they just gotten into handling social security cases that they just open up shop last month or last year, or have they been handling social security disability cases, you know for the last 10 or 15 years, you know. For example, you know, we have been handling social security disability cases at Liner Legal since we opened our doors many years ago - that is all we do. You know another good question to ask is: What type of experience will I be having working with the office? You know from what will it be like to work with the case managers or paralegals? What will it be like to work with the lawyers? Will I be interacting with lawyers directly? Will I be mostly interacting with support staff? That's an important question to ask. A lot of times people hire a law firm expecting that every time they you know call on the phone, a lawyer is gonna be the one you know on the other end of the line which might not always be the case and it's important that you have your expectations met and addressed right at the beginning of the representation. Another important question to ask is will you be getting my records or what's gonna be expected of me as a client? You know, am I gonna have to go and get my own medical records or are you as the law firm gonna go and get the medical records for me? You know, are you gonna fill out paperwork? You know as the law firm, am I gonna be as the client responsible for filling out paperwork or handling phone calls from social security? Those are very important questions that you want addressed right at the beginning. What is the division of responsibilities between the law firm and the client? Another important question to ask, will you cover case expenses? You know fortunately in Ohio, we don't have to pay for medical records for our clients, but in in many other parts of the country, people do have to pay for medical records and there are other case expenses that can come up. But one thing you definitely wanna make sure of is who's gonna be paying for what? If any money has to go out on the on the case, you definitely wanna find out you know what are those costs gonna be and if there are costs that you as the client are responsible for, who's gonna be covering them and at the end of the case are you gonna be responsible for paying them back? The last and final question that I think that any client or somebody that's getting ready to work with the law firm, even if you're just looking to work with a law firm as a potential referral partner that you should always ask, how long does it take to get questions answered. The number one difference, I think between a happy client and an unhappy client, is the communication in the process and you know when when somebody calls the office, do they get there, you know is there always somebody there to answer the phone or at least, can they expect that they're gonna get a call back relatively quickly, you know, within an hour or a few hours? It's impossible to answer every single phone call right when the phone rings, but is there at least you know a reasonable expectation that after, you know, if you call somebody in the morning that you'll get back that same morning or early in the afternoon with an answer from somebody that can give you an answer to the question that you asked.
