What does a personal injury lawyer handle?

The short answer

Personal injury is the name of an entire area of law, not the name of a kind of accident. That is why it sounds so wide open the first time you read it.

What groups those cases is not how they happened. It is the question somebody asks afterward: was a person hurt, and was it somebody else’s carelessness that caused it?

This page explains the category. It cannot tell you whether yours fits, what anything is worth, or how long you have. That comes from a licensed attorney reading your facts against your state’s rules.

What falls under the word

In the United States, personal injury usually covers any situation where somebody ended up hurt and there is a question about somebody else’s carelessness. The ones that come up most:

• car, commercial truck, motorcycle, and bicycle crashes;
• people struck while walking;
• falls and injuries on a property, in a store, in a building;
• injuries at work caused by somebody who is not the employer;
• machines, tools, or products that failed or came without a guard;
• dog bites and other animal injuries.

Your situation resembling one of those does not mean you have a claim. It means the question belongs here, and the question gets answered with facts rather than with the list.

Who may be involved

An injury claim can involve the person or business alleged to be responsible, one or more insurers, or both. Who pays depends on what happened, the law that applies, and any available coverage.

When an insurer is involved, an adjuster may open a file, assign a claim number, and call with questions. That adjuster works for the insurance company, not for you. Your state insurance department publishes consumer information and accepts complaints about insurers.²

Coverage can matter alongside responsibility and harm. Your own policy may matter too, and its declarations page lists the coverages and limits by name.³

What actually decides a claim

Not how bad the car looks and not how unfair it feels. What a licensed attorney reads is duller than that:

• exactly what happened, in order, with dates;
• who else was there and what they saw;
• what documents exist: report, photos, video, messages;
• what the medical records say and on which dates;
• which coverages exist on both sides;
• and which state laws, policies, and court rules may matter.

That last one is where most people skip a step. The state where the injury happened is usually the place to start, but where people live, vehicles are registered, policies were issued, and companies operate can also matter. States genuinely differ here, and a page written for somewhere else can be completely correct and still be no use to you.

If a claim does not settle, where a lawsuit can be filed is another fact-specific question. It is not something a generic page can choose for you.¹

What no web page can tell you

There are three things you will see promised elsewhere that this site is not going to give you, in either language.

Whether you have a case. That depends on facts nobody on this side has read yet.

What it is worth. There is no value calculator here and there is not going to be one. Nobody can produce that number honestly from a web page.

How long you have. Time limits are set by each state and they change with the kind of matter and with who the other side is. A number printed on a national page would be wrong for almost everybody reading it. That answer comes from a licensed attorney looking at your matter.

Fees work the same way. They are set by the firm, put in writing, and explained before you sign anything. This site does not give fee figures. When an agreement reaches you, read it line by line and ask about whatever you do not understand.

And if what you want is to ask somebody who is not us, directories of free or low cost legal help exist by area.⁴

What to write down today

This works the same for a crash, a fall, or a machine. The details that matter later are the boring ones, and they fade fast.

1. The date, the closest time you can give, and the exact place.
2. What you were doing right before.
3. Full names and phone numbers of everyone who was there.
4. Company names, not just people.
5. Whether police or a supervisor came, and what you were told.
6. Photos of the place the same day, including the ones that feel like too many.
7. Where the nearby cameras are, even if you never get the video yourself.
8. The first part of your body that hurt and when you noticed.
9. Every place you were treated, in order.
10. Every call you have already taken from an insurer and who you spoke to.

Put it in the notes app on your phone, the way you would tell a friend. Nobody expects a report and nobody is grading spelling.

What a case check asks

Expect plain questions in a plain order. What happened, where it happened, who else was there, whether any report exists, where you went to get looked at, and who has already called you.

If you do not know something, the honest answer is that you do not know. That answer is fine. It beats guessing, because a guess that turns out wrong is harder to fix later.

A licensed attorney reads what you send. You get one of three answers back: a request for more detail, an offer to talk about representation, or a plain no with the reason.