Accident Lawyers -- What Are They Up To??

Q: I've noticed recently that accident lawyers are getting tremendous amounts of advertising visibility. Here in Austin TX the three biggest firms seem to dominate everything: they have billboards, ads going on daytime television every ten minutes, and their ads are plastered all over the phone book cover (which I guess costs close to a million per year). It is obvious to me that they are making absolutely staggering amounts of money. The other thing that is obvious to me is that they are targeting mostly minority clientele (Hispanics). I can't seem to connect how this is working. Are they using Hispanics because they're more amenable to giving the firm a bigger cut of the settlement? I'm not sure how this works. One would think that if Joe Escalade was in an accident he would make more money for the firm, and the firms would try to seek out these types of clients.

A: -Juries? Perhaps more minorities are on juries and the firms believe they have a better chance of a conviction with a minority client. -I was right with you till the last paragraph, which is not just wrong but obviously wrong. If the firm takes 40% then Joe gets 60%. Unless you're going to try to tell us that the firm

settles for _less_ than he could have got on his own, he gets more than half. But the truth is that if you've been injured, virtually no one can get as much from an insurance company as a lawyer. This is a frequent theme on misc.legal.moderated, from lawyers and non-lawyers alike. (I'm one of the latter, and when injured in an accident was stupid enough to settle without a lawyer because my injuries seemed minor. Then the hidden damage showed up, and I could get nothing.) Therefore Joe must choose between 100% of a smaller pot and 60% of a larger pot, possibly a much larger pot. Many clients find that the larger settlement is larger even after deducting the lawyer's