How can a birth injury attorney help me?
An attorney who specifically focuses on pregnancy, newborn and birth injury cases can help you and your birth-injured loved one obtain important resources for rehabilitation, lifestyle adjustments, life care, support and more. Throughout a birth trauma case, your birth injury attorney will determine the cause of the birth injuries, identify the negligent party, work with leading medical experts and life care planners, and secure the appropriate resources based on the client’s specific, lifelong needs. Beyond the legal services your birth injury attorney provides, he or she will provide you with care, support and open communication throughout the litigation process. At Reiter & Walsh ABC Law Centers, our birth injury attorneys prioritize creating close relationships with clients—we spend a lot of time getting to know our client families and their children in order to fully understand their lifelong needs. Once our team gets to know a family, we are there for them for life.
What Should I Look for When Choosing a Birth Injury Attorney?
- Make sure that a large percentage—if not all—of the firm’s cases are birth injury cases. More importantly, the attorney working for you should be an attorney that focuses solely on birth injury cases.
- Birth injury litigation is extremely complex, so it is essential that your attorney is very experienced in the field. The more experience your attorney has with the medical and legal aspects of birth trauma, the better.
- It is particularly important that your attorney has experience with the specific medical problems that your child has—determine if your prospective attorney has handled cases involving the same issues your child experienced. For example, if your child suffered from hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) as the result of a misdiagnosed nuchal cord and delayed emergency C-section, your attorney should have experience litigating these complications and areas of negligence. In many instances, parents don’t know what issues caused their child’s injury, and, of course, it is the job of the attorney to determine this. The attorney you choose should have a thorough understanding of the nature of your child’s injuries and successful case outcomes to support it.
- A knowledgeable and experienced attorney is better able to determine the best medical experts for your case and is more likely to know a wide range of experts.
- Look for a law firm that will handle your case in-house. Just because a firm advertises that it handles birth trauma cases doesn’t mean that it actually does—several firms spend a lot of money on advertising so they can obtain a large number of cases. They then refer many or all of their cases to other firms and collect a percentage of the fees from the verdicts and settlements. When this occurs, the client suffers for a number of reasons, including a lack of personal interaction with the attorney handling the actual case. When an attorney doesn’t take the time to get to know the family and the child he or she is representing, the attorney won’t be able to fully understand the needs of the family and the current and lifelong needs of the child.
- Ask the attorney how much he or she will communicate with you during the litigation process and how involved you and your child will be in the process.
- Make sure your prospective attorney is a member of the Birth Trauma Litigation Group (BTLG). The BTLG is a group of leaders in birth trauma law who share information and experience and develop educational programs for its members on birth trauma and medical negligence issues. Another important group is the Michigan Association for Justice (MAJ), which is one of the nation’s most powerful plaintiff associations. MAJ is a very strong patient advocacy group, and the MAJ works to shape laws that protect patients’ rights.
- Review the firm’s record of verdicts and settlements. More importantly, you should view your prospective attorney’s specific record.
- Look at the client references on the firm’s website and ask the firm to give you references. Speak with clients who can shed light on your prospective attorney’s skills, personality and work ethic.
- There some companies that rate attorneys, such as AVVO and Martindale-Hubbell. You can look up your prospective attorney on these sites to see how he or she rates. The ratings include professional conduct, ethics, client feeback and peer feedback.
- Most birth injury attorneys work on a contingency fee basis whereby the client pays the attorney a percentage of what the attorney collects from a settlement or trial. At Reiter & Walsh ABC Law Centers, our clients don’t pay anything until the case is won or settled.
Why Do Parents Pursue Birth Injury Cases?
Here, attorney Emily Thomas will walk you through the long-term benefits of pursuing birth a trauma lawsuit for your loved one. To learn more about birth injuries and our law firm, make sure to visit our video library.
Legal Help for Birth Injury Victims
An experienced and compassionate birth injury attorney can help you and your family put the pieces of your life back together after the devastating experience of an injury to your child. The Reiter & Walsh, P.C. team understands how overwhelming it can feel when you’re trying to understand your child’s diagnosis, plan the best treatment and therapy for him or her, and manage medical bills that are piling up. Throughout the entire litigation process, our birth injury attorneys remain fully engaged with client families. We thoroughly discuss all settlement options with our clients to make sure they understand all the legal terms and factors. Our birth trauma team handles communication with the court, as well as all paperwork, research and communications with the accused medical staff and hospitals. This can be a stressful process and it is important to have support and expertise you can trust.
To begin your free case review with our birth injury attorneys, please contact us in whichever way you prefer. Should we take your case, you’ll never pay anything unless we win or settle in your favor.
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