What to Look For When Reviewing A Personal Injury Attorney's Web Site

A few words about personal injury attorney “advertising:” Nothing beats “word of mouth” advertising. In this day of slick TV commercials and professionally built web sites, it is hard for personal injury victims to know which personal injury attorney will be right for their claim or case. If possible, try to talk to people in your community who may know something about a lawyer’s or law firm’s reputation. Remember if a lawyer spends a lot of money on TV commercials he or she may not be relying on “client satisfaction” and client recommendations for new business. In that situation, the lawyer or law firm may not be concerned about your satisfaction because the “next” client will be coming from an advertisement and not you. Personal injury attorneys or law firms that rely on reputation and “word of mouth” advertising understand recommendations from former clients will only come about if the client is satisfied with the results. Do not be afraid to inquire about what percentage of a personal injury attorney’s new business comes from the recommendations of former clients. 

Your goal is to find a good attorney who cares about you and your case or claim. The personal injury victim who is seeking a personal injury attorney should look for an attorney who has good communication skills and who has true concern and compassion for the victim who has been injured.  The web site for a personal injury attorney or law firm is a good place to start trying to determine if you think a lawyer or law firm would be a good personal injury attorney for you to consult.  As you know, there are hundreds of attorney locator programs or services on the internet. The problem is that most of these services are “buy your way to the top” services, which only allow a few personal injury attorneys to be listed in your area because they have purchased those spots. Usually a fairly large list of personal injury attorneys can be found by typing in something like this: “car accident attorney,” “personal injury attorney”, “slip & fall lawyer”, “worker’s compensation lawyer”, defective product attorney,” etc., along with your city and state into any of the major search engines such as Google or Yahoo.  This will usually return a general listing of personal injury attorneys in your area along with links to their web sites. Once you begin visiting these web sites you may notice that many of them are very similar. The content about personal injury claims and cases will be the same and they may have the same or similar RSS feeds reporting updated information about huge civil verdicts and other national legal stories. The reason for this similarity is because the same web site is re-packaged and sold over and over to personal injury attorneys across America by a few large attorney marketing groups. They change the template and add some personal information about the attorney but it’s basically the same. The content and information about personal injury claims or cases is very general. In fact in some instances it may actually be incorrect based upon a particular State’s actual laws. As far as the reports of large verdicts, those are from across the United States and even the world and the law firm may have had absolutely nothing to do with obtaining that verdict.

When you look at a web site for a personal injury attorney, look at the content and information that is being presented. Is it fluff or substance? Is it specific for your State or jurisdiction? Was it written and prepared by the attorney or an attorney within the firm?  More importantly, does the web site have useful, helpful and meaningful information? For example, besides just telling a personal injury victim why they should hire a lawyer, does the web site provide helpful information on how to select a competent personal injury attorney? Or, if it’s a web site for an auto-negligence attorney, does it provide information that will help you set up your claim with the at-fault driver’s insurance company? Does the attorney or law firm provide free information about the subject area? Simply put, is the attorney’s web site helpful?

Look at the biographical information about the attorney or attorneys in the law firm. Are the lawyers at the firm members of the American Justice Association or the State or local Trial Lawyers Association? Are they members of any preeminent National organizations, such as the Academy of Trial Advocacy? Are they Board certified? [Note: Some State’s do not accept or recognize  ”certifications” in specific practice areas.] Has the lawyer attended any type of trial advocacy program, such as the 40 hour Trial College sponsored by the National College of Advocacy?

Does the web site have a page or link that actually reports on case outcomes for the specific personal injury attorney or law firm? As mentioned above, many law firm web sites have live feeds that review recent large civil verdicts or the celebrity criminal case de jour, but victims should be looking for specific verdicts and results obtained by the lawyer and/or law firm. [Note: Some State’s rules of ethics and professional conduct prohibit attorneys from publishing specific trial results or outcomes. If that is the case the web site will probably reflect that information.]

Many personal injury attorney web sites have “free case evaluation” or “free internet consultation” submission forms.  Unfortunately, the complexities of personal injury claims or cases renders these “free” submission formats not very useful for anything other than establishing initial contact with the attorney or law firm. Most of these free submission formats are programmed to give a very generic response with a prompt that someone from the law firm “will be calling to follow-up for more information.”

If you take time to review the personal injury attorney web sites for several attorneys or law firms in your area, you should be able to identify several attorneys or firms with whom you may want to consult. The next step should be to contact these firms by telephone or e-mail and determine which personal injury lawyers or law firms you would like to consult with in person. Remember, almost every personal injury lawyer or law firm provides free office consultations, so your goal during the initial telephone conference should be to cull the group down to two or three lawyers and/or law firms with whom you want to setup an office consultation. Bring all your related paperwork and documents to that meeting.

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