THE TRUTH ABOUT WORKER'S COMPENSATION LAW

If you’re looking at this site odds are you you’ve been injured at work and you’d like to know where you stand in the Worker’s Compensation system. I’ll get to explaining all that but of course you know that in choosing a person to represent you it’s something of a leap of faith.
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A Relationship Built On Trust

A Lawyer You Can Trust

It’s difficult to know who to trust and as with any relationship based on trust, there’s always the possibility for the person with more knowledge of the subject matter to take advantage of the person with less. Much like in choosing a mechanic to work on your car, finding a “good” mechanic doesn’t just mean that you’ve found someone who knows how to work on cars.

Yes, you want a competent mechanic but finding a good mechanic often means you’ve found one who won’t place his interest before your own in order to maximize his own profit. A good mechanic means one you can trust to act on your behalf as if he is you, to honestly tell you what your car needs and not take advantage of the fact that you know less about cars than he does to charge you a bunch of money to fix a bunch of things that maybe didn’t need fixing.

There are plenty of competent lawyers who know how to handle Worker’s Compensation cases. This stuff isn’t all that complicated. The problem is there are many lawyers who have no qualms about placing their own interest ahead of yours. What might that look like in a Worker’s Compensation case? Well, under Minnesota law a Worker’s Compensation attorney may earn 20% of what they recover for you in the form of a settlement, and if you’ve done any looking around you probably already know that.

What you may not know is that if a work comp attorney takes any of the issues in dispute on your case to court and wins you any benefits at all, even if winning those benefits doesn’t put much if any money in your pocket, that the attorney is then able to claim hourly fees against the insurance company which the court orders the insurer to pay.

Does Your Lawyer Have YOUR Best Interests In Mind?

Frustrated Client

Assuming all goes well, your case will remain open, other disputes will arise down the road, and the lawyer can do it again and again. The hourly fees a judge may award to your attorney after one court hearing can easily be as much or more than the attorney would have earned in getting you a good settlement. As such, there is certainly the possibility that a lawyer may be tempted to keep you in the system and expose you to the risk of court in the very real hopes of earning double or triple the amount in fees in the course of your case as compared to what he would stand to earn if you had settled your case.

This is not to say everybody has to settle their case, and certainly every case is unique as is every persons’ circumstances and idea of what is a “good result” on their Worker’s Compensation claim. But if your lawyer doesn’t want you to see what kind of offers might be possible in terms of settlement, you won’t see them and you won’t have the option of deciding what’s best for you.

Now assuming your lawyer steers you toward court and he wins you the things he thought you were likely to win at court, in the best case he may have just wasted some of your time. However, despite knowing the risk at court of a judge shutting down your case, some lawyers are perfectly content to risk the loss of their client’s valuable case if that means they have a chance at earning much more money for themselves.

If a lawyer knows that driving most cases to a court hearing earns him the most fees most of the time (but also results in the occasional disaster), and if that lawyer doesn’t do everything possible to explore potential settlement and do everything possible to get you the best offer he can prior to court—the option of exiting the system with a fair settlement —then your lawyer is hiding the ball to their own benefit and at very real risk to you. A good percentage of very competent workers compensation lawyers drive their cases this way.

Beware “Big Name” Law Firms

Lawyers Laughing

I won’t name names but I’m talking about lawyers/firms whose names you’d probably recognize if you’ve been looking. Arrogant lawyers with big egos who think a degree makes them special. Nothing disgusts me more. They like to put the suit on, go to court a lot, and they do win a lot of things at court. Nevermind that’s usually not the way to put the most money in the client’s pocket, but it looks like they’re doing a good job and they are — just not for you.

Your lawyer’s own self-interest can keep you in the system for much longer than necessary — I’m talking years — even if you would have loved to be done with your case in say 9 months to a year, grab a nice settlement, and move on with your life. It can be much worse. When they do have a bad day at court, they’ll say sorry the judge didn’t like your case and they go back to their many other cases while your one and only case is toast. If your own lawyer’s ego and greed drove that result and they weren’t transparent with you about your options, then it’s a real shame (if not an outright crime).

They earn a shit ton of money this way — way more money than me to be certain. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t handle cases that way because it’d sure be easy enough. Truth is, I’m no saint but I don’t enjoy screwing people over even if they’d be none the wiser. That’s not how I was raised, and yes an intuition that God is real likely plays a part.

I know that any court hearing carries with it real risk, and my goal is always to do everything I can to get you the option of a guaranteed result for good money. If you decide that’s what’s best for you, then great. It’s your case. You always have the option of court and I’m happy to go there when it makes sense for you. As I see it, the main risk to the injured worker isn’t the enemy at the gates, it’s the trusted ‘friend’ who greets you with a smile and a dagger in the back. I know what makes a strong work comp case and I take very seriously the trust a client places in me. I don’t get confused as to whose interest I represent.

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Karl Menk
Karl Menk
Worker’s Compensenation
& Personal Injury Attorney