What type of Product Liability Attorney do I need for my claim? How do I go about picking one?

Question: I was injured by a defective product that caused serious injuries which required extensive medical treatment. The majority of the medical expenses have to come out of my pocket. I believe I have a good case against the manufacturer of the product, but how do I find a good Product Liability attorney to represent me?

Response: There are two parts to this: (1) finding a potential attorney; and (2) evaluating him or her.

Let’s tackle (1) first. Always the best way to find any professional is through recommendations. If you know of anyone else who’ve had a product liability case, ask them what their experience with their lawyer was and whether they’d recommend the attorney. Or if you have used other attorneys (such as a real estate attorney when closing on a house, or a trusts and estates lawyer to draw up a will), ask them for a recommendation. Even if they don’t practice in the area, they may know someone who does; and even if they’re not an expert in that field, they will usually know if the other attorney has a good reputation.

If you don’t have any recommendations to go by, you can contact your state bar association. They will often have services to help people find lawyers.

Once you have a lead to a potential attorney, how (2) do you evaluate him or her? Don’t worry about where they went to law school—there’s actually very little correlation between where the attorney attended law school and how good he or she is. However, some things you do want to ask:

• Find out how much of the attorney’s practice is products liability. They don’t need to be limited to only products liability, but you do want it to be a significant part of their experience.
• Make sure their products liability experience is plaintiff side, or representing the injured person. If they mostly defend manufacturers, then even if they know products liability generally, they may not know how to get the most money for you—their usual role would be preventing people like you from winning, or if they win, reducing what the size of the award.
• Find out how long they’ve been practicing; ideally, you want someone with at least a few years under his or her belt.
• Ask for the names of some cases they’ve won, whether by winning at trial or by negotiating what they consider a good settlement. Given the Internet, you can probably find information about many of these cases and verify that the situations had some relevance to yours, and also confirm the outcomes.
• Ask for references. If they’ve done a good job for their clients, they should be able to come up with someone who will speak to you about their experience.
• Do a general Internet or Web search for the name of the lawyer, the name of his/her firm, and the names of any attorneys working with him or her. Often any negative information, like disciplinary actions taken against the lawyer, will come up this way.
• Trust your instincts. You’re going to have to work closely with your attorney for the best results—lawyers are not fire-and-forget missiles that do their job without client input or interaction. Instead, getting you the compensation you deserve requires teamwork and close collaboration. If you don’t have a good feeling about an attorney or just plain don’t like him or her, you’re not going to be able to team effectively with that lawyer. And conversely, if you have a very good feeling about a lawyer and working with him or her, that may outweigh a relative lack of experience.

Picking a good lawyer is an art, not a science. It’s not dissimilar to picking a good doctor or a good contractor, and you can apply much of the same process or logic.

Answered by Steve Zweig

Additional Resources:

• Product Liability Attorneys
• Product Liability Claims

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