Why a Trial Attorney Is Your Best Option

By Grant Law Office on December 26, 2018

You’ve seen their commercials on late-night TV, and had your view obstructed by their gaudy billboards. They promise you cash, and they promise it fast. We’re talking about “settlement mills,” lawyers and law firms that advertise aggressively and handle a high volume of cases at the same time.

Settlement mills work like this: they accept a case, review it as little as possible, meet with their buddies at your insurance company, and ask for a settlement amount that doesn’t break the insurer’s bank book. Before the law firm hands you your settlement, they take a healthy percentage of it for themselves. In the end, everyone wins—except you. The insurance company wins, because it doesn’t have to go to trial or pay you the compensation you deserve. The law firm wins, because they get paid for doing very little work. And because they put a minimal amount of effort into each a case, they can handle many cases at once—thus, increasing their income.

Settlement mills rarely take a case to trial, and because of that, insurance companies love them. Since insurance companies know that the chances of settlement mill taking them to court are slim, there is little incentive for them to offer a fair payout. In “Run-of-the-Mill Justice,” a 2010 paper written by Stanford Law School professor Nora Freeman Engstrom, she writes:

“Insurance companies might be choosing to cooperate with settlement mills, in part because settlement mills appear willing to settle the largest claims—which present the highest chance of a catastrophic verdict—at an attractive discount. In addition, settlement mills and insurance companies share two sets of overlapping interests: speed and certainty. Insurers, it appears, cooperate with settlement mills, in even marginal cases, because cooperation is profitable.”

The Difference Between a Settlement Mill and a Trial Attorney

One major difference between a settlement mill and a personal injury trial attorney is the sheer volume of cases they accept. Ms. Freeman Engstrom writes:

“Studies suggest that conventional personal injury attorneys have somewhere around seventy open files at any one time, and serve on the order of 110 clients per year. Settlement mill attorneys (or non-attorney negotiators) often triple that—juggling 200 to 300 open files on any given day and serving 300 to 400 clients annually. Indeed, one Georgia settlement mill attorney reports that she personally settled approximately 600 to 700 claims in a thirteen-month span.”

Another major difference is that with a trial attorney, you will actually dealing with that attorney. For the most part, settlement mills will farm out cases to a lawyer outside of the firm, or have a case manager or paralegal handling the majority of your case.

Grant Law Office Is NOT a Settlement Mill

Atlanta’s Grant Law Office is the furthest thing from a settlement mill. The husband and wife team of Wayne and Kimberly Grant is personally involved with every case. We will do an extensive investigation into your claim, consulting physicians and other experts to determine the amount of compensation you deserve. We will NOT be hesitate to go to trial to get a verdict you’re satisfied with.

Grant Law Office has over 30 years of experience representing Georgia injury victims, and we will put our skills and knowledge to work on your claim. Below are a few of our case results:

• $12.5 million for the death of a child at daycare
• $3 million for failure to diagnose
• $2.65 million for hospital malpractice
• $1.275 million for legal malpractice (failure to properly handle a medical malpractice claim)
• $5 million for medical malpractice (failure to treat)
• $1.15 million for forklift injury
• To read more case results, please click here

If you’ve been injured or lost a loved one due to the negligence of another person, don’t go to a settlement mill. Instead, contact Grant Law Office for a free case evaluation by calling (404) 995-3955 today.