We receive many calls a week from people wondering why they can’t find an injury lawyer in Hawaii who will take their case.  There are many different reasons why you may be having a hard time getting a lawyer to take your case.   We’ll discuss a few of the many possible reasons here.

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First of all, it’s important to keep in mind that most injury lawyers work on contingency.   This means that they don’t get paid until they settle your case.  This type of arrangement is very rare in our society.  With almost any other profession, if you do the work you get paid.  Therefore, because injury lawyers only get paid if they win your case, they have to make sure they only accept cases in which they feel there is a high probability that they will get paid.  After all, lawyers not only need to make an income to support their own living expenses, but they usually have a family to support and employees that must be paid.  If potential clients didn’t want to pay on contingency and wanted to pay by the hour, they would not have a hard time finding a lawyer to take their case because the lawyer would know that he/she would be paid no matter what the outcome of the case is. 

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The lawyer has to evaluate the possible case to determine if it’s worth pursuing.  When someone calls to discuss their potential case, the lawyer has to try to figure out if the person that the client wants to sue is liable for their injuries.  Many people think that just because they’re injured than they are entitled to compensation.  This is not true.  You are only entitled to compensation if the other person was at fault for the accident.  Did the other person break a traffic law which resulted in the accident?  Did the other driver breach a duty of care?  Was the other driver negligent?  If not, then that driver is probably not liable for your injuries. 

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The next question to ask is whether the potential client has sufficient injuries to justify a lawsuit.  For example, if the person had very minor injuries which only resulted in a few hundred dollars in medical bills, then it would not make sense to pursue that case in court.  An injury lawyer would go out of business if he spent countless hours pursuing lawsuits where the injuries were minimal.   Many lawsuits can take several years; therefore, an attorney has to make sure that if he is going to work on a case for several years, then he will make enough at the end to compensate him and his employees for those many hundreds of hours that they will spend working on a case.

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Once the injury lawyer determines that liability in the case is solid and the injuries are severe enough to warrant a lawsuit, he then has to consider a couple more things before accepting a case.  Is the potential client likable?  Are they greedy or mean?  Are they rude and difficult to deal with?   The attorney must ask himself these questions for two reasons.  The first reason is that the attorney may have to deal with this client for many years.  Simply put, no amount of money makes up for having to deal with a mean or nasty person on a daily basis.  For some reason, somewhere along the way, clients forget who caused their pain and suffering and they misdirect their anger toward their attorney, who, ironically, is the only person working to get them the compensation they deserve.  Attorneys also try to avoid greedy clients.  Not only are greedy people unpleasant to be around but they sometimes cause major problems in a case.  There are many times throughout the case process when settlement offers will be presented.  If the settlement offer is reasonable but the greedy client doesn’t want to accept it, then there can be severe consequences down the road for passing up a reasonable offer.

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If you have a good case and you’re a decent person to be around, then you will have no trouble finding a Honolulu car accident lawyer.  Most likely the first lawyer you call will be more than happy to take your case.  However, if you find yourself calling dozens of Oahu personal injury lawyers and none of them are returning your calls, then it may be time to ask yourself if you have a valid case that’s worth pursuing.

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We all hate paying large auto mechanic bills and dentist bills, but most of us understand that these professionals have gone through school and training to gain the skills necessary to solve your dental or mechanical problems.  We don’t like getting those big bills, but we understand that if a mechanic spends all day fixing your transmission he should be well compensated for all that work.  We understand that there is a lot of overhead and taxes involved in running a business.  Attorneys are no different.  They have a lot of expenses to pay to run their law firm.  They have employees and taxes to pay.  Just like we need a mechanic to solve a complex problem with our car’s engine, we sometimes need lawyers to solve complex legal problems in our lives.