You got in a wreck, but you're not one of those kind of people, right?

You’ve seen the commercials. Smarmy, disingenuous, basically preaching to the greedy. ACCIDENTS = MONEY. I hated seeing those in the 90s, and guess what? I still hate seeing them now. They appeal to the worst of us, people who will seize any opportunity to grift a few dollars. You’re not one of those people, so when you got hit, you don’t need a lawyer. You can do this on your own, right? Wrong. Let me tell you why.

Insurance companies are businesses, and when it comes to paying claims, they are buyers. They are buying your claim in exchange for you to go away. You are a price tag to them. Undertaking the job of selling your own claim to an insurance company by yourself is like trying to sell an antique gun to a pawn shop. You are at their mercy. Now, don’t get me wrong, insurance companies don’t want you to think of them like that. They spend fortunes on marketing to condition you to associate them with the good guys. They are good neighbors, you are in good hands, they just want to save you money, etc..But here is the truth, when you present a claim for injury to an insurance company, they are not on your side. They owe you no duty. Their duty is owed to their shareholders. I’ve had adjusters tell me that if they paid reasonable values for claims that they would go out of business. That says a lot about their claims settlement practices.

I’ll boil it down. What determines how much an insurance company will pay for a claim is what is the smallest amount that they think they can legally justify. Whether or not their offer is fair or just is not part of the equation. I see people all the time who think that they will just get the insurance company to make arrangements for them to get the medical care they need so that they won’t have to come out of pocket. It never works out like that. Insurance companies do not pay for your claim to grow in value. If you are lucky they will pay for whatever medical care you have already received. What that means is that if you are one of the millions of Americans without health insurance you will have to finance your own care and hope to be reimbursed. Seems like anxiety that you shouldn’t have to bear.

And let’s say you have put up with their run around and actually gotten to the point where they will make you an offer, prepare to be bombarded with every reason in the book as to why they should not pay you for your claim. The property damage was too minor. Their insured changed his story and is now blaming you for the accident. You treated longer than they think you should have. Your injuries are dismissed as being nothing more than “soft tissue” and not worth much of anything. You actually had an MRI which revealed a bulging disc, but people your age frequently have those with no pain, so they can’t really be sure that it was their fault. Your MRI revealed a herniated disc, but they just didn’t like how low your medical bills were. I have heard all of these argued before, and they are all crap.

All of this is to say that if you are injured in an accident, going it alone is putting yourself at the mercy of the adjuster. It is not an exaggeration to say that the anguish that they can put on you trying to just get something reasonable for your injuries can exceed the anguish caused by the accident itself. Why do that to yourself? You are not being greedy in saying, “You know what? I really don’t care to be messed with. I want someone to handle this for me who has more expertise in selling claims than I do.” It doesn’t make you one of those people. It makes you smart. You wouldn’t trust someone with no knowledge of real estate to sell your house, so why would you do that very thing when it comes to your own life? You need an expert who knows how to handle all the obfuscation, rhetoric, and nonsense that adjusters are trained to throw at you. I make it a point to make my message to the public centered around protecting your rights for a reason. I didn’t grow up obsessed with rights and obligations in order to enable litigious people. I started this journey because people getting bullied and screwed over haunts me. There is a nobility in fighting for ideals one believes in.

So when you find yourself in that unlucky position of being victimized through the fault of another, if you don’t want to be one of those people, don’t hire one of those lawyers. FInd one that reflects what is truly important to you. That is the Stanford way.