I recently saw an ad for an attorney in which he was bragging about all of the money that he had “recovered” for his clients in “settlements, judgments and benefits”. It sounded like a huge number, but in reality it was not. I find such a claim to be intentionally misleading, and I do not use that measure in my own ads or claims. If you notice, I state that I have “put tens of millions of dollars into the pockets of [my] clients through personal injury settlements.” The difference is important. First of all, I leave out the subject of benefits. Benefits include Personal Injury Protection and all other no-fault benefits, including medical payments benefits in automobile and homeowner’s insurance policies, workers compensation, health insurance and social security and other disability benefits, including disability insurance. Recoveries for workers compensation and social security disability benefits are not that interesting to somebody seeking an attorney for a car accident. What is more, these benefits can be quite misleading. Imagine, for example, that I get $600.00 per week for a client in workers compensation benefits for five years. I would have “recovered” $156,000.00 in “benefits” for my client. However, that $600.00 per week is not a particularly good, bad or indifferent result. It is just the benefit he is entitled to. I also did not have to prove any fault and I did not recover one dime for pain and suffering, which is the art in personal injury law. Similarly, if I get someone put on social security disability for $500.00 a month for 30 years, that is another $180,000.00 in “benefits recovered,” but, once again, is not a real testament to my skill as a negotiator, my skill in proving pain and suffering, or my skill in proving fault.
But even focusing purely on the issue of car accidents, I continue to exclude benefits. For the average automobile accident case, I would “recover” approximately $5,000.00 in personal injury, health insurance med pay and disability “benefits”. At $5,000.00 per person, two hundred clients is $1,000,000.00. A lawyer advertising on television easily takes in a thousand clients a year, so that is $5,000,000.00 per year in “benefits”. After twenty years, that is $100,000,000.00. So think about what that means when you see an older attorney advertising on television that he has recovered over $100,000,000.00 in settlements, judgments and benefits for his clients.
In the interest of being honest, I have chosen to exclude any reference to benefits because I doubt my clients care about the quantity of benefits that I have recovered. I do know that they care that I have gotten their bills paid, but beyond that they care nothing about the amounts. I also do not focus on the amount “recovered,” even in my settlements. In actuality, that is not the important number. Most attorneys have a large number of extra “fees and expenses” that they pass on to their clients so that a disproportionate amount of the recovery winds up going to the lawyer. What is important is how much the client actually receives. Like most attorneys, I charge the one-third contingent fee. After that, I really do not charge much else. There are generally no fees for “PIP administration,” “phone calls,” “paperwork” or any of the other miscellaneous fees that lawyers seem to charge. I do not charge for “investigation” or “copying” and, more often than not, do not even charge for the medical records that I purchase. As a result, for most of my settlements, I get one-third and the client gets two-thirds. So I focus on the number that is important to the client, which is how much the client is receiving “in pocket”. It makes for a less dramatic marketing pitch, but it looks at my accomplishments from the right perspective. I have put tens of millions of dollars into the pockets of my clients through personal injury settlements. I am very proud of that fact. How much have I “recovered in settlements, judgments and benefits”? Who cares?