Your First Meeting with Your Personal Injury Attorney: What to Expect

If you’re looking for a personal injury attorney, this is likely your first car accident. With that, you’re likely wondering what to expect from your first meeting with your personal injury attorney.

We understand that the entire post-accident experience is overwhelming, from choosing what kind of firm you want to enlist, what kind of accident you’ve been in, the process itself, and much more. This is why Kenneth and the team at Hancock Law want to ensure you have as much information as you need to make the right decision.

If you’re meeting with Kenneth for representation in a personal injury case, there are certain stipulations that come with it:

1. You have been in a car accident and it is not your fault.
2. You’re actually injured. If property damage is your sole concern, a personal injury attorney is not the attorney for you.
3. You reached out to Kenneth. It is unethical for attorneys to contact you directly unless you are a family member or a former client.

After your accident, and after you’ve sought medical treatment, it’s important to call a personal injury attorney as soon as possible. After a client calls our team, their first meeting experience looks a little something like this.

At Hancock Law, your first meeting will always happen face to face. Kenneth takes pride in investing his time to develop relationships with his clients to understand their cases. Most often, the intake meeting will happen at the Hancock Law office in Lake Suzy (south DeSoto County between Arcadia and Port Charlotte). However, we understand that depending on the circumstance and severity of the injury, the first meeting with your personal injury attorney may also happen at the hospital, at a rehab facility, or at your home. Regardless of location, you will be working with Kenneth directly, not solely a paralegal.

At the office, you’ll be greeted by Carly, our litigation paralegal, who will walk you into the conference room to ensure your case details are handled with maximum privacy. You’ll give her all the documents that you brought with you. If we have done our job well—and we take pride in doing so—you will know exactly what documents are needed. Between the time you call Hancock Law and your first meeting with your personal injury attorney, Carly or Brandy will have emailed you a list of documents to bring with you to this intake meeting. These documents include but are not limited to:

Our team will make copies of all your documents and return the original documents to you. Then, Kenneth will meet you in the conference room and introduce himself. He’ll have the document copies to walk through together as you talk throughout the intake process. With fifteen years of experience under his belt, Kenneth knows all the questions he’ll need to ask you in order to do his job well.

But before getting into the technicalities of the accident, Kenneth will start by asking an equally important question, “What’s on your mind?”. In our experience, you are either inundated with so much information that you don’t know where to start or have a litany of questions for him and the team. Whichever position you find yourself in, we are happy to help answer whatever we can. One of the most important roles of a personal injury attorney is to bring clarity to clients, no matter how long it may take.

Once Kenneth answers your questions, he’ll have questions for you in turn—this is usually the shorter part of the meeting, believe it or not! Finally, we’ll have a folder of actual documents for you to sign in order for Kenneth to be able to represent you. 

• Statement of Client’s Rights: a two-page agreement that informs clients about what they are entitled to by law.
• Contingency Fee Agreement: clarifying, among other things, that Hancock Law’s payment is contingent on the outcome of the case 
• HIPAA authorizations: these allow us to access your medical records and bills.
• Authorization to Handle Health Insurance Liens: explains that in the event you have health insurance coverage we must pay them back for any accident-related treatment from your recovery.
• Social Media Notification Waiver: informing clients that, under Florida law, you have no expectation of privacy when it to social media posts. Anything and everything you post may be used against you later. Even innocent posts can be twisted by the insurance companies. 

At Hancock Law, you’ll never be offhandedly served paperwork without explanation, awaiting a signature. Kenneth won’t read each document verbatim, but he will go through each document with you, page by page, to ensure you know what it is you’re signing. 

Once all is signed, we’ll provide you with a folder with additional information, tips, and do’s/don’ts. If you have no further questions, Kenneth himself will walk you out. It is our goal that by the end of the intake meeting, you feel relieved and confident in your choice of representation.

If you’ve been in an accident, are injured, and are looking for personalized representation, contact us. We’ll set up an intake meeting for you as soon as possible so that you can focus on healing, while we focus on your settlement.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that the information provided in this blog is general in nature and should not be construed as legal advice nor as creating an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different and legal advice cannot be provided by Hancock Law unless/until we meet to discuss the particulars of your case. Whether an attorney-client relationship exists can differ on a case-by-case basis, but at Hancock Law we consider such a relationship to exist only upon a potential client’s request and our agreement to accept that representation.