Article provided by Chicago Personal Injury Lawyers - Steinberg, Burtker & Grossman, Ltd.
When I entered the practice of law more than 35 years ago, Chicago personal injury lawyers were not permitted to even suggest that you hire them for fear of being accused of solicitation. In short, a Chicago injury lawyer was expected to sit in his office and wait for the telephone to ring. New clients resulted from the referrals of former injured clients or other attorneys.
As the years progressed Chicago injury attorneys began advertising their services in newspapers. 800 telephone numbers were activated to allow the public to call in and ask legal questions for free. This technique got around the solicitation fear as the attorney could always state that there was no solicitation since the individual called them! The next step was the television commercial in which attorneys generally offered their services to the public. Since there was no one on one solicitation, the commercial passed the ethical standards of the day.
The next step in legal advertising was of course the internet. One day a potential client came to my office seeking to hire a personal injury attorney to redress the death of his father in an auto accident. He had heard that I was a highly experienced trial lawyer but refused to retain me since I did not have a web page. When I asked him to explain his decision, he stated that only the best trial lawyers have web pages and without such a page I was not one of them. I was shocked by the statement, given my years of successfully prosecuting Chicago personal injury and medical malpractice suits on behalf of my clients'. The very next day I began the development of my web page!
The latest rage for those Chicago personal injury attorneys that flood the airways with commercials is to advertise "We guarantee to not charge you a fee if we do not win your case."
These attorneys act is if they had just reinvented the wheel! Given the fact that personal injury attorneys have always been retained on a contingent fee basis, they have never charged a fee without a successful recovery. Is this a good reason that you should hire this Chicago injury attorney?
Since (apparently) all good Chicago trial attorneys have web pages how does a client select the right one? Well, you now know that it should not be based upon the representation that: "We Guarantee that we will not charge you a fee if we do not win your case."
