Medical Malpractice Law Firms

How to choose a medical malpractice lawyer

This is the practice area where the most firms advertise and the fewest take cases. A bad outcome is not negligence, proving the difference requires a doctor willing to say so under oath, and the case has to be funded for years before anybody is paid. Knowing why firms say no is the best preparation for choosing one that says yes.

The question is the standard of care, not the outcome

Medicine carries risk that nobody caused. The legal question is not whether the result was terrible but whether the care fell below what a reasonably competent practitioner in that specialty would have done, and whether that failure caused the harm. Both halves have to hold: care below the standard that changed nothing, and a devastating outcome from competent care, are each a case that loses.

A firm worth hiring will explain which half it doubts, specifically, rather than telling you the case is "hard".

A doctor has to sign before the case exists

Most states require a certificate of merit or an expert affidavit filed with or before the complaint: a qualified practitioner, usually in the same specialty, stating that the care breached the standard. That review is paid work and happens before a firm knows whether it has a case, which is why the screening is slow and why so many enquiries end in a decline.

Ask who reviews the records, in what specialty, and whether the firm pays for that review itself. The answer tells you whether you are talking to a firm that files these cases or one that refers them to somebody who does.

• How many of these cases did you file last year, and in what specialties?
• Who reviews my records before you decide, and do you pay for that review?
• Do you try these cases, or do you refer them out once they are filed?
• What are the case costs likely to be, and what happens to them if we lose?
• Is there a damages cap in this state, and does it apply to my claim?

The clock may have started before you knew

These deadlines are their own subject. Many states run the period from when the injury was discovered or reasonably should have been, which helps a patient who learns years later; several then cap that with an outer limit measured from the treatment itself, which does not. Claims involving children, and claims against public hospitals, often run on different clocks again.

Every city page here states the deadline that applies where the firms practise, read from the statute rather than summarised from another directory.