Lawyer Referral Service: Need a lawyer? Who doesn’t these days? Usually it’s a civil lawsuit, a construction lawsuit, a divorce case, or a traffic accident lawsuit. Even if your situation doesn’t fit any of these, there is probably a lawyer whose expertise covers your situation.
When you don’t know who to hire or where to start looking for a lawyer, you should consider a lawyer referral service.
What a Lawyer Referral Service Is
If you have ever used some of those websites or apps to look for a plumbing contractor or a remodeling contractor and they give you a list of contacts for what you are looking for, you know what a lawyer referral service is. Dozens of lawyers in the Miami area have signed up through a lawyer referral service to help them connect to potential clients and make their law firms more visible to the public online.
It will help you find the right lawyer when you are not sure what kind of lawyer to hire. Just by entering some basic key word search info, the referral service online takes you to a series of lawyers that might be right for your particular legal needs.
How the Service Works
Lawyers sign up with the service to help them connect to more clients. Clients search the site to help them find a lawyer. You can also dial 1-800-injured in Miami to locate a lawyer to take a personal injury, accident injury, or work-related injury case. When you find a few lawyers to consult, you can ask them questions and figure out if you have a case that can be taken to court.
Lawyers will not advise you over the phone or in person. Ultimately, you do have to retain a lawyer before you can receive any sort of legal advice. This is why it is so important to choose the right lawyer the first time so that you aren’t paying retainer fees for more than one lawyer for the same issue.
You can consult the referral service several times for free. If you choose to hire a lawyer through the website, there may be some additional fees involved for using the site to find a lawyer. Access is granted to a point, but then “subscription” fees are required to obtain contact information for the lawyer you want to hire.
How Do You Know That You Are Getting Solid Legal Help?
Since any lawyer can sign up to be placed on the lawyer referral service, how do you know that you are getting good legal help? The lawyers that typically sign up for this service are some of the very best that Miami has. They are required to put their expertise and “track record” into their online bios with the referral service. This typically includes any and all rewards for their firms and personal awards for themselves as “best of…” what they do.
Read a lawyer’s bio thoroughly before making contact with him or her. Connect through a chat on the referral site to ask questions about their expertise and experience. Make sure the lawyers you contact can and will take your personal injury case. Not every personal injury lawyer takes accident cases or work injury and workman’s comp cases. You need a lawyer to be the right fit for your own case. Pick a lawyer based on that first.
Legal Costs and the Cost of Using a Referral Service
Usually, these referral service companies don’t charge you a thing just to look and search. They charge you a subscription fee when you are interested in hiring someone. The good news is that these fees are non-binding and refundable if you are not happy with the service itself.
It’s the lawyers who have to pay into the referral service. Lawyers have to pay a professional fee to be posted on these sites. These costs might pass along to customers who find the lawyers and law firms via the referral service, but not every lawyer will do that.
The retainer fee will vary widely among these lawyers too. The bigger the law firm, the higher the retainer will be. Before you settle on one lawyer from the referral service, be sure to ask what the retainer is. It can be as little as $1,000 to as much as $10,000 or more. Hire the best, but also hire what you can reasonably afford.
Need More Than One Kind of Lawyer?
It’s not uncommon for people to need more than one kind of lawyer here in Miami. Maybe you need an accident and personal injury attorney for a trucking accident, a disability lawyer to get disability benefits, and a last will and testament lawyer to set up a will in case you pass away while waiting for your other cases to settle. All can be reached by dialling 1-800-injured in Miami.
