How Should a Potential Client Prepare for a Personal Injury Consultation? (What Documents/Information to Have On Hand, Etc)

What do clients need to bring to prepare for an initial consultation? You know, honestly, nothing. We’re going to talk through that at the initial consultation and we’re going to lay out  what it is that we’re going to need from them at that initial consultation. So I don’t want anybody to feel like you got to show up having done a bunch of homework, right. That’s our job. That’s what we do. We’re going to tell you the homework you need to do, what we need from you, when we need it by, and we’re going to over-communicate. You know, there’s a lot of problems in the law on lawyers not communicating with clients. Our complaints, more often than not, are, hey, can you leave me alone for a few days, because you know, we follow up, we check in, you know, we want to know more about you, your story, and we want to be prepared so we’re asking questions of you, and we’re demanding needs from you. But at that initial consultation, clients often show up with investigation reports; that’s helpful, right. They’ve got a lot of information on the investigation or police reports that give us insurance information, they give us drivers, you know, information, they give us a narrative of what you know witnesses saw or witness statements on what witnesses saw. So that’s helpful, and if we don’t get it at the initial consultation, we’ll go get it ourselves, or if you’ve got it at home, we’ll request it. Clients do often show up with medical records, right, and if they don’t, we ask for them. If they can get them, great; if not, we send out our requests, and we do our job, and we go get them. Because in every personal injury case, every tort case, we’ve got to prove, you know, duty breach, causation, and damages, and that damages component is, well, what were your injuries, and can we causally link those injuries to what the event was or is it something else right. And so we’re looking for, you know, medical records and you know it’s helpful if you can bring that to the consultation. If you don’t, and we’re going to follow up, and we’re going to get them one way or another because we’ve got to  prove that element of a negligence case. One of the big pushes in every consultation I do is for what we call before and after witnesses. And what those witnesses are are individuals that you know, and you know family is okay, but outside of family is better, right, co-workers, folks that you go to church with, right uh, your dry cleaner people, right. You go in and rub shoulders with somebody  to drop off and pick up dry cleaning, you know, every couple of weeks. You know, people that can  say, hey look, here’s who Matt was prior to the date of this event; here’s what he’s like now,  right. He’s short, he’s grumpy, he doesn’t tolerate things well. And we want those witnesses to be able to come in and say, man, I was water skiing with him, awesome slalom skier,  a year ago, after this event, we were out on the boat he didn’t even dare get in the water; because of how sore he is, and you know how concerned he is of hurting something else. And so we line those  witnesses out the door, and at consultations, we ask for that information. You know, who can come  in that’s not the plaintiff, right? Because the plaintiff, according to a jury, is biased at best, right. I mean that, you know, a lot of people say you’re there for the money. We want people that are going to come in and support what it is that we say on how we are now versus how we were  you know prior to the event and so you know b&a’s are a a big component of how we work our cases.