There is a really bad Chicago personal injury law firm that I recently saw advertising looking for a lawyer with at least two years of experience to handle injury cases. First off, if you are in an accident, you don’t want a lawyer with only two years of experience on your case. The lawyer fee is the same no matter which attorney handles your case.  So you are better off with someone who has experience and not much to learn represent you.

Second, my very educated guess is that this job posting is in response to an order from the Chief Judge of Cook County.  It was ruled earlier this year that all personal injury cases estimated to be worth less than $50,000.00 are required to go to mandatory arbitration.  This is in part because of the huge back load of cases due to trials being delayed by Covid.

What this means is that there about to be a ton of hearings and a lot of these high volume, crappy Chicago law firms are not going to be able to handle them. So they may have a need to hire lawyers and throw them in to the fire on cases they aren’t familiar with. In other words, some people who have been dealing with one attorney for months or years are about to have their fate decided by a lawyer they’ve never spoken to.

Good car accident attorneys keep their case volume manageable and don’t take every case that walks through the door.  A lot of these law firms that heavily advertise and take almost any case that comes through the door are about to have a lot of unhappy clients.

Mandatory arbitration requires you to accept what the arbitrators decide or risk that if you go to trial and do worse you will have to pay the fees of the defendant’s lawyers. In other words, you are almost surely going to have to accept the arbitration result.

Arbitration is like a trial. You will testify. There is evidence. It’s really important that you have an attorney who knows your case and is not only prepared for the hearing, but also prepares you.   While bad execution at arbitration won’t cost you hundreds of thousands, it could be the difference between $50,000 and nothing.

My advice to you is that you need to insist on an experienced lawyer to handle your case and if the firm you hired won’t provide one, you probably need to find a new attorney before it’s too late.

If you have any questions or want to speak with a lawyer for free, contact us any time in confidence at 312-346-5320.