Do you trust personal injury law firm billboards scattered across Florida?
Okay, so this isn’t a real personal injury billboard and don’t expect to see one like this from C. Todd Smith Law anytime soon. We don’t advertise on TV or billboards. Instead, we rely on the good word of mouth of our friends and clients. We’ve all seen the billboards like this around town and across Florida. The billboards where attorneys brag about how much money they obtained for a client. I don’t have a problem with lawyers advertising. Though this tactic has always bothered me (that’s not to say it isn’t effective. I hear that firms using this report great results).
Personally, I don’t think billboards and TV advertisements are a good reflection on our profession. Certainly they don’t help to improve the public’s perception of personal injury attorneys. This really matters when we pick a jury for a seriously injured client. Most of the jury panel is already biased against our client before knowing anything about the case. That’s because they wrongly believe our client is just playing the “personal injury lotto”.
This oversimplification of “my attorney got me money” advertising demeans the hard work of personal injury attorneys who are just trying to get the best result they can for clients who have been injured through no fault of their own. It reduces the entire process to a “lottery ticket” mentality and the perception that for any accident, no matter how small, all you have to do is call up Mr. Billboard Attorney and he will get you a big check. More importantly, this type of advertising usually leads to confusion for claimants in personal injury cases about what the true value of their case is.
What is the Value of Your Personal Injury Claim?
No two cases are the same. There are a lot of individual factors that go into determining the value of a claim. Past injuries, medical expenses, future medical expenses, lost wages, and pain and suffering are just some of the categories of damages a person may have, but how you calculate the value of a claim is like putting together a puzzle.
With over 25 years of experience I approach every case with the goal of obtaining the highest settlement or verdict allowed by law. These results are based on the circumstances of that case and the objectives of my personal injury client.
If you want to know about our results, I’m extremely proud of my firm and the work we have done for the past couple of decades and we would be happy to share our results with you while maintaining our client’s confidential information. And although we’ve had million dollar settlements, we don’t have to put it on a billboard to prove it.
