We do not believe that a majority of people understand how common medical errors are in the United States. According to the official statistics, roughly a quarter of a million people die every year due to medical errors. Without any doubt, this is a serious number which indicates quite a lot of things.

What’s even more interesting to see is that medical errors are the third main cause of death in the country. So, what should an individual do when his relative does due to a medical error. The first thing that comes to mind is hiring a medical malpractice attorney, right? Of course, the attorney should be experienced.

Since these cases than to be much more complex than those that require hiring a personal injury lawyer, you need to be careful when selecting the professional that will represent you. That’s why we want to provide you with a couple of questions we believe are essential to establish the lawyer’s credibility.

1. How Experienced Are You?

Before you decide on the professional you will hire for these cases is seeing just how experienced he or she is. We’ve already stressed out how complex these can be and you want someone competent enough with pointing out specific aspects of these, which are essential for being successful.

What’s more, we would like to emphasize that checking out the success rate is also an important matter. If this doesn’t help with determining someone’s efficiency and competence, we don’t know what is. Sure, you can always check the background of the attorney after asking this question.

Still, it is clear that the importance of this question in a conversation is high. Hearing what someone has to say about his own experience and credibility is always an interesting thing to hear. The most competent ones will not overemphasize their virtues. You will be presented with a realistic picture.

2. What Are My Chances of Winning?

The next question we want to point out is regarding your chances of winning the case. Of course, this is an important thing to address since filing a claim without any chances to win, leads to a serious waste of time and money, which nobody enjoys, don’t you agree? Basically, ask how strong your case is.

Getting a proper answer to this one requires you to submit all the documentation you can gather on this case of yours. We don’t recommend you to be impatient. The attorney will certainly need some time to go through these and see whether you have a chance of winning this one at all.

Also, it is important to say that you should believe what you hear, especially if you have established the credibility of the professional already. Not listening to the advice can lead to something we’ve already pointed out, a waste of money and time. Both of these are crucial resources. So, wasting them is always bad.

3. What Should I Focus On?

After you submit all the documentation you have, the next thing is to ask what areas or elements you should focus on. Sure, people have a certain knowledge about what went wrong in a particular situation. However, a professional has the goal of providing the right perspective on the issue.

Naturally, the most important aspect to expand on is finding the mistake that was made by the medical professional. Still, there may be something entirely different that you can use to win the case, but you haven’t seen it. An experienced medical malpractice lawyer will find these legal gaps.

Besides the obvious mistakes made by the medical professional, the lawyer understands the medical standards that need to be followed. Breaching these can result in a fatal outcome for the patient. So, when this breach happens, proving that your claim was legitimate becomes significantly easier.

4. Is There any Conflict of Interest?

According to literally all the US states, malpractice attorneys need to point out whether there’s any sort of conflict of interest with them accepting to represent you in court. Sometimes, you may come across a professional who represents the hospital you are about to sue.

If that’s the case, they are probably aware if something like this has already happened before. In that case, you cannot count on them being credible enough since they work for both parties. Another situation when the conflict of interest can happen is when the professional has already agreed to represent the other party in this particular case.

While this happening cannot make too big of a problem for you, it can cause a loss of resources and time. That’s why we believe that asking this question is of the utmost importance. You will not need to invest additional effort into finding someone else.

5. How Much Do Your Services Cost?

Finally, we’ve got to the question that determines whether you will hire that particular professional or not. We’re talking about asking how much these services will cost you. Everyone knows that hiring an attorney can be quite an expensive endeavor and not every individual can afford them in every situation.

Thankfully, you will see that these attorneys operate on a contingency fee basis. For those who don’t know what this means, it means that you don’t have to pay anything until the decision is made by the court. The only situation when you have to do it is when your case was a success.

So, the attorney will get its payment after the client receives the compensation. However, the most experienced ones, not just in this area, would require some upfront payment. Therefore, you might need to look for those who are slightly inexperienced, but who are successful nevertheless.

The Bottom Line

Every time we need to face the court, no matter whether we file a suit or we are sued, we are about to go through the unpleasant procedure. It’s because of the uncertainty that surrounds these situations. Thankfully, hiring a competent professional can make it much less stressful for you, especially when you need someone to represent you in a medical malpractice case.