If you have been injured in an accident in San Antonio, knowing best what to do means understanding all available options. That involves (1) hearing all the facts; (2) understanding the applicable law; and perhaps most importantly, (3) knowing how the legal system works.

Even if the facts are on your side, you have to be able to prove them, which can involve subpoenaing documents to prove road conditions, medical authorities to testify about injuries, or engineering experts and technological visual aids to reconstruct accidents for a jury.

The laws can be complex, and the negotiation process can be tricky. Under the Texas rules of evidence, you can’t use an insurance company’s settlement offer as proof they know their client caused the accident. But an insurance company attorney can use your apology after a car accident to claim you were at fault and deny coverage. Insurance adjusters often do that to lowball the settlement, and unless you understand the rules, it’s really not a fair fight.

In fact the most basic reason to talk to a personal injury lawyer if you have been in an accident is that the odds are stacked against you without one.

Large insurance companies and corporate defendants have departments of high-priced attorneys, set on convincing you to accept as little money as they can. Pressure tactics are not uncommon, and many of our clients come to us after an insurance company refused to cover their medical bills.

Even if attorneys or insurance adjusters personally feel compassion for your pain and suffering, as representatives of the company, they will use any statements you make, or legal theories they can construct, to deny or reduce compensation. It’s nothing personal, it’s their job.

But don’t face your legal adversaries alone.

When they treat your claim as a set of numbers in their quarterly spreadsheet, or accuse you of causing the accident, or don’t return your calls, let us intervene.

Because no matter the case, the cost, the time, or the size and strength of our adversaries, we never stop working, with only one target in our sight: justice for our clients, whatever that means for them.

Although your injury may be the most pressing matter in your life, insurance adjusters have piles of accident cases on their desks, and they have two goals: (1) get you to sign a settlement as fast as possible, (2) for the lowest compensation they can convince you to accept.

A personal injury attorney presents your side of the story, and considers all the ways you are affected by the accident. These include losing wages and income, and the cost of therapeutic care for ongoing pain.

No wonder that a widely–cited study of nationwide auto accident settlement data demonstrated that auto accident victims represented by an attorney are generally compensated about three times higher than those without one. In fact, eighty-five percent of auto insurance company payments for bodily injury are made to victims who hired a lawyer to represent them in the negotiations.

At Justinian & Associates, our entire legal practice is devoted to laws that protect people who were injured in an accident victims. It’s all we do. We do not chase ambulances, or look to make a quick buck by shaking down businesses. But the law is designed to protect injured victims from the carelessness and bad acts of others, and our goal is to ensure our clients receive that protection.