Should I Hire a TV Lawyer?

You’re watching TV late at night, or early in the morning, and an ad comes on. We’ve all seen them before: “Get in a wreck, I’ll get you a check” or “Hire the hammer.”  Vivid photographs of automobile wrecks appear soon after these promises of big bucks and fast cash.

So, the question is out there, should I hire a TV lawyer? Well, we will give you an idea of what typically happens with one of these firms and then you can decide.

Here’s what happens when you hire a TV lawyer

First, you call the magic 1-800 number or the billion, billion, billion-dollar number that promises you a lifetime of wealth.  You’re typically routed to a call center, where you speak to a clerk who takes down your name, age, social security number, injury date, and so on.

Your case information then gets funneled upstream to a paralegal or law clerk. This person screens your case to see if they want to forward it to a less experienced lawyer in the firm.

Let’s say you successfully navigate those areas, and the low-level lawyer decides that they want to take on your case. This firm immediately sends paperwork for you to hire them as soon as possible.

After signing up your case, the TV lawyer will send your case to another law firm

Once you sign the right forms, that law firm then determines whether or not they want to warehouse your claim to other firms (along with the hundreds of other claims they received that week). Alternatively, if you have a better case, they send your case out to a real trial law firm.

Now, your case is sent out to two or three different trial law firms to decide who wants to take the case on a percentage of the legal fees.

This review process is similar to what you’ve already been through.  A law clerk, or administrative aide, screens the case and if it passes, it goes to a low-level lawyer or a relatively new lawyer. 

If your case jumps through all of those hoops, it may be passed on an experienced trial lawyer, or perhaps even a partner in the firm.

At this stage, you are seven or eight steps removed from the person that you initially contacted with your 1-800 number phone call. By now, the amount of people you may have spoken with is in the double digits. You’ve probably explained your case to someone 7 or 8 times now.

Instead of going that route, you can directly call a reputable and experienced trial law firm in your area. You will be immediately connected through to a paralegal to a lawyer who will review your claim. If the firm accepts your case, ninety percent of the time, you will be represented by the lawyer you spoke to.

Now that you have the background the pros and cons of calling a lawyer from a TV commercial. You decide. Should you hire a TV lawyer?