If I live to be a 100 I will never be able to predict whether or not a client is satisfied with our legal representation after the case is over.
Sometimes the very nature of the business creates friction between the attorney and the client.
Can I give you an example?
We are near obsessive about getting clients medical records in a timely manner.
The insurance company will not make an offer to settle an injury claim without all of the clients records.
If we cannot get the clients records from a certain hospital the case will just sit.
Not from lack of effort on our part. Just because the hospitals take forever to give us our clients records.
The clients naturally want to know what the top offer is on the case.
But again without the records Pittsburgh wrongful death, medical malpractice, slip and fall, car accident and criminal defense attorney Bernie Tully is powerless.
That can be very frustrating.
Another area that causes friction between an attorney and client is the whole issue of medical liens.
Clients rightly feel that they shouldn’t have any lien for the treatment they received.
They understandably feel that they did not cause the accident so why should they have to repay a medical lien.
Unfortunately the law requires certain types of medical liens to be repaid.
Medicare is one. The Department of Public welfare is another.
An attorney’s duty bound to pay those liens back from any settlement in the case.
But unless we have the lien amount we don’t know how much $$ the client is going to get.
So that brings me to the example of a client .
I will call her Mrs. X.
Last month we settled Mrs. X’s injury case for a reasonable amount of money.
We got the check and had to put it in the escrow account as is required by law.
The problem was that we couldn’t get a final lien amount from DPW or Medicare.
Legally we could not make a final distribution to the client because we did not know the lien amount.
Mrs. X started to call Jenny one of our paralegals on a daily basis asking what was being done about the lien.
Jenny as everyone knows is a very caring compassionate person. She patiently tried to tell Mrs. X the legal issue involved.
I did also.
Mrs. X was not very understanding about these delays.
My guess is Mrs. X called our office 35 times until the matter was finally resolved.
Each and every day she would call us and forcibly tell us that we were not doing our business.
So Pittsburgh wrongful death, medical malpractice, slip and fall, car accident and criminal defense attorney Bernie Tully was just stunned with what happened after Mrs. X’s case was finally settled.
Mrs. X on her own sent us the most beautiful candle vase and fancy candles you could imagine.
Her note thanked us for helping her in her injury case.
Everyone from our office was floored.
We certainly didn’t expect this reaction from Mrs. X at the completion of her case.
Pittsburgh wrongful death, medical malpractice, slip and fall, car accident and criminal defense attorney Bernie Tully will never be able to predict how clients react to us if I live to be 100.
Come to think of it that’s only 37 years from now.
Maybe I should change that to a 1000 years,
Ha ha. I hope you enjoyed this blog.
Thanks for reading.
Bernie the attorney.