An inexperienced attorney gets a call from a plaintiff who wants to know if she has a valid medical malpractice case. The attorney contacts you for help in screening medical malpractice cases.
Our role is vital
Why is it so important for an attorney to use your services for this purpose? Inexperienced LNC and inexperienced attorneys both need to focus on the value.
There are phenomenal costs associated with medical malpractice cases.
- The cost of filing the case
- The cost of court reporters and transcripts
- The fees of expert witnesses
- The costs of demonstrative evidence
- The fee for putting on a focus group
- And more
So many costs are associated with a medical malpractice case. One of the things that we have to remember is that it is important for attorneys to know which cases they should turn down because the majority of the cases that they are approached with are not going to be ones that they are going to take.
So many phone calls involved in screening medical malpractice cases
I periodically asked my plaintiff attorney clients, “If you get a hundred phone calls from potential plaintiffs how many cases will you actually take?”
Consistently they told me that they investigated about five cases.
The process of screening those cases involved getting medical records and consulting with medical experts. Out of those five cases, after doing further investigation, the attorney might take two or three. Of those cases that they take, 93% of the cases settle and that’s, again, a very important number to keep in mind.
When those cases that don’t settle go into court, and that is only about 7% of all the cases that are filed, the defense wins about 95% of those cases, sometimes less in certain venues and sometimes more.
Why do those cases get to court? There are really a couple of reasons in my experience that cases get to trial.
First of all, the plaintiff attorney’s demand may be more than the insurance company is willing to pay, so they take a gamble that a jury is going to decide in the favor of the defense. Or secondly, those cases are defensible and indeed the defense should win the case.
Your role in helping with screening medical malpractice cases is vital. Instead of using the phrase, “I screen medical malpractice cases for merit”, say, “I help attorneys screen medical malpractice cases for merit so that they accept only the cases they have a reasonable chance of winning.“
Now you’ve changed your language from describing a service to describing a benefit. Attorneys pay attention to benefits.
The more you know about the role of screening medical malpractice cases, the better prepared you are to help attorneys. Medical Malpractice LNC Case Screening shows you how to
- establish the standard of care
- identify theories of liability
- use key elements of effective case screening
- spot case winners and losers
- avoid pitfalls of medical record analysis
Medical Malpractice LNC Case Screening is a 90 minute information-packed online training that is essential to learn the skills of screening a case for merit