Characteristics of Top-Notch Personal Injury Attorneys in Oregon

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Hallmarks of the Best Oregon Personal Injury Lawyer

Anybody who has been injured in an accident likely needs the assistance of a lawyer who practices in injury law. If the accident occurred in Oregon, you’ll no doubt want the best Oregon personal injury attorney you can find working on your side, helping you through the process. But what traits are common in the lawyers that qualify as truly “excellent,” versus those who are just average. After having worked with hundreds of clients and thousands of client consultations, we’ve distilled the most common traits that clients are seeking when they mean they go looking for the best Oregon personal injury attorney for their case.

1. Experience

There’s no substitute for plain old experience when it comes to litigations and client satisfaction. Experience can only occur through the handling of large numbers of cases, working with opposing attorneys, and lots of time in the courtroom. You wouldn’t want a doctor who was about to perform their first surgery on you even if they had read and memorized every book on the subject. Sometimes there’s no substitute for just having done it many times before. The lawyers at Pacific Injury Law Firm have handled hundreds of cases over the years, and been in court countless times. From motion hearings, jury trials, bench (judge only, no jury) trials, and even successfully arguing before the Oregon Court of Appeals and Oregon Supreme Court, our injury attorneys aren’t new to litigation and the fight for clients.

2. Accessible to the Client

This might sound obvious, but anybody who has worked with attorneys for any length of time is certain to have encountered the complaint that “I can never reach them” or they “are way too busy to talk to me.” It’s an unfortunate fact that many personal injury attorneys actively avoid their clients, or even pride themselves as being “too important” or “too busy” to actually meet with their own clients. Clients end up speaking with assistants or paralegals most of the time. This is not the case at Pacific Injury Law Firm. We know that your case is one of the most important things in your life, and we make every effort to make sure we take care of you and show you the respect that you deserve. While we are no doubt busy, the vast majority of the interaction with our firm will be with the lawyer actually handling your case. We believe that we can’t fully get behind you until we work directly with you. We also always remember that we work for the client, not the other way around. When you hire Pacific Injury Law Firm, you become part of our team.

3. Courtroom, Negotiation, Mediation, and Arbitration Skills.

Not every case is settled in the courtroom by a jury. Statistically, most are not, by a huge margin. The ability to negotiate on behalf of your client is every bit as critical - if not more oftentimes - than being an effective courtroom advocate. The truth is, juries are unpredictable and a trial is uncertain even with the strongest cases. When you go into a courtroom, you are handing over the final decision maker to people to whom you have no real insight or background. Because of this, both plaintiffs and defendants are incentivized to negotiate to a known settlement. To do this, the best injury lawyers are skilled at recognizing the weaknesses of their clients’ cases, as well as the strengths that can be leveraged into great settlements. With backgrounds in several areas of law - from criminal to family law to personal injury - our Oregon injury attorneys have experience negotiating and obtaining great results for hundreds if not thousands of clients.

4. Thorough Investigators

Not all Oregon personal injury cases are obvious on the face who is at fault or how an accident occurred. Sometimes seemingly straight forward cases become muddied or confused as to legal causation once discovery starts coming in and we start evaluating the evidence in the case. There might be multiple parties at fault which require investigation, or the cause of a car or truck accident (for example) might require expert witnesses to reconstruct the scened. Medical conditions or injuries almost always require testimony or other evidence by expert medical personnel. The best Oregon injury lawyers need assistance from experts in an array of fields to build their case effectively. To do this, they first need to thoroughly investigate the case themselves and familiarize themselves with the evidence. Then, if necessary, they will need to use other expert investigators to gather more information to put the case together. Building a personal injury case takes time. At Pacific Injury Law Firm, building that successful case starts with a thorough investigation.

5. Organization

Personal injury cases are paper and information-intensive. Between medical records, client and opposing counsel letters, notes, email and text communications, photographs, videos, and the massive amount of other information that becomes part of the file, modern personal injury cases are a virtual firehose of data and potential evidence. Sometimes a key piece of evidence might be a single page of chart notes buried among thousands of pages of medical records? The best personal injury lawyers need to find a way to consistently organize and parse this information, and keep it organized so that it is useable. The lawyers at Pacific Injury Law Firm are fastidious about maintaining organization of client files. In fact, founder Adam J. Brittle, as a former electrical engineer, has a penchant for seeking out new and innovative ways to stay at the forefront of legal technology. To this end, he is constantly leveraging and building new tools to make use of emerging technologies like Amazon’s machine learning tools, AWS pattern matching, and document processing offerings. Our office seeks to stay at the forefront of all law offices, ensuring that every text, email, document, message, legal research, or piece of medical discovery is automatically associated with your file to be put to best use in your case. At Pacific Injury Law Firm, we believe that organization is key to providing you a formidable platform from which to advocate your case.

6. They Listen

Sometimes the goal that a lawyer thinks is the best for a client is not actually what the client themselves wants. Clients sometimes want to settle a case earlier than their attorney would like to. Sometimes a client feels it is necessary to “have their day in court” to be heard by a judge or jury, to tell somebody about how an accident has impacted their lives. The top Oregon personal injury attorneys are the ones that will actually listen to their client’s goal and remember that they work for the client. As lawyers, our job is to try and achieve those outcomes that work best for our clients and their families, not the outcome that is best for our public image or ego. At Pacific Injury Law Firm we treat this duty seriously. We will give you candid advice about your case. If a client has unrealistic expectations, we will try to listen to their goals and explain to them why it might not be feasible. If a client has goals that are realistic but different than our own, our job is to educate about the client's options and then follow their instructions. It goes without saying that this is all done with strict adherence to Oregon’s Rules of Professional Ethics.

7. Compassion and Empathy For the Client

There’s no avoiding it, cases involving injury are hard. Clients come to see us in terrible circumstances. Whether it is a car or truck accident, death from the negligence of another driver, motorcycle accident, or other injuries, our clients come to us when they have been hurt and need help. Recognizing the pain, fear, and even anger that our clients often are experiencing having had their life disrupted - often dramatically - is normal and expected. Compassion and empathy for this circumstance is a trait that often can’t be taught, and is found in all of the very best personal injury attorneys. At Pacific Injury Law Firm, we know that injuries are frustrating, and we feel for your loss. One of the joys of working with injured people is that we know we get to help people who generally have done nothing wrong. Our injury lawyers are respectful and honored to be hired to help individuals in their time of need, and remain cognizant of our duty to help.