(Contributed post for our North American readers)
After being hurt in a motorcycle accident, you have a lot on your plate—especially in the first days and weeks after the accident. Most importantly, you need to focus on your physical and emotional health while you come to terms with your injuries and start to look towards recovery. At the same time, you need to hire a lawyer so that you can have the best chances of getting a fair and comprehensive settlement from the responsible driver’s insurance company, because the reality is that no insurance company will pay you everything you deserve without a fight.
Trying to find a lawyer who is available to take your case, and more importantly QUALIFIED to take on your specific type of case, can be complicated and overwhelming while you are trying to manage your personal life in the early days after your accident. Fortunately, there are ways that you can connect with an attorney who is ready to take your case without needing to do the legwork on your own, which you can read more about here.
Choosing a lawyer can be complicated, but understanding why you need to work with an attorney who focuses on your particular type of accident is important. Read more about this below.
Can a Lawyer Represent Car Accidents and Motorcycle Accidents?
A personal injury attorney focuses most of their energy and expertise on recovering damages for their client after an accident, and the reality is that there is a significant overlap in many types of personal injury cases. At their core, personal injury cases seek to establish fault, then establish liability, and then move forward to calculating damages that the victim is entitled to. From this perspective, there is no major benefit to working with a motorcycle accident attorney after a motorcycle accident instead of just working with a car accident lawyer. But is that the end of the story?
Motorcycle Attorneys Know Motorcycle Law
The reality of hiring an attorney for a personal injury is that they need to have extensive understanding in two areas: tort law, and the laws and regulations around the activity you were involved in when you were injured. This means that working with a motorcycle accident attorney gives you access to a clear understanding of tort law that they practice daily, and a specific understanding of the risks, laws, biases, and other details that make a motorcycle accident unique.
From the perspective of an attorney who is unfamiliar with motorcycle accidents, it may be easy to take certain issues at face value when the insurance company pushes back on them, such as the reduced visibility of a motorcycle on the road as opposed to a car that an insurance company may use to lower their client’s degree of fault.
Support and Experience
When you are working with an attorney who understands the specifics of your situation and your accident, you can get the compassion that you deserve throughout this difficult and painful process. Working with someone who understands what you are going through and can represent that experience to the insurance company during your settlement negotiations goes a long way to stay confident and motivated to fight for what you deserve.
The final answer? You may get great legal support from an attorney who does not specifically focus on motorcycle accidents, but if you want to work with someone that you trust has your best interests and can see the nuances of your specific motorcycle crash, hire an attorney who has a history of successfully representing motorcycle accidents.