When you work with a Mississippi personal injury lawyer, there will be quite a few documents that are involved in the preparation of your case. While some documents, such as demand letters, are prepared by attorneys, other documents, such as some of those that are involved at the beginning and the end of a case require the client’s input and signature.
After you make the decision to hire a personal injury attorney, you must sign some type of fee agreement to formalize the attorney-client relationship before your case will move forward. For accident cases, the most common type of fee agreement is the contingency fee contract. A contingency fee contract is a fee agreement under which the lawyer does not get paid unless the client recovers on their claim for damages. The amount of the lawyer’s payment under a contingency fee agreement is expressed in the document as a percentage of the client’s recovery. If the lawyer pays any costs out of their own pocket in order to prepare the case, the client must also reimburse the lawyer for those costs.
Contingency fee arrangements are a reflection of the degree of risk involved in spending time and money handling accident and injury cases. In cases where the client does not recover on their claim for damages, the lawyer does not get paid for their time. For this reason, attorneys who handle injury cases are highly motivated to keep their expenses as low as possible and pursue resolution of the client’s case whenever it is at all possible to do so.
In addition to the contingency fee arrangement, you will also be required to sign a medical authorization. The medical authorization is a form that enables your attorney to obtain medical records from all of the doctors and other treatment providers who have provided care for you as the result of your accident. Medical records are an essential source of information which can support your claim for damages. When clients sign medical authorization forms early on in their cases, attorneys can begin getting medical records from treatment providers and establish connections with those providers to receive updated information as it becomes available.
Since many accident cases involve claims for lost wages, clients are required to sign a wage authorization form. Like the medical authorization form, the wage authorization form enables your attorney to communicate with your employer and obtain information regarding your wages, the amount of hours that you had been working, your employment history, and other information that can support your claim for lost wages.
At the conclusion of an accident case, there are also a couple of important documents that you will need to sign. After your case settles and the money is delivered to your attorney’s client trust account, you will be asked to sign a release and settlement statement. Also, once the settlement proceeds are transferred, the lawyer will execute a voluntary dismissal of your case.
Giddens Law Firm, P.A.: Serving Clients throughout Mississippi
If you would like to learn more about whether the Mississippi Accident Attorneys at the Giddens Law Firm, P.A. are a good fit for you and your current legal matter please call our office today, at (601) 355-2022.