Whether you plan to try to represent yourself or you’ve decided to work with a personal injury attorney to help you with your personal injury case, here are three things to keep in mind in order to ensure fair compensation for your injuries.
#1. Preserve The evidence
The more you can do to preserve evidence, the greater the chance of winning your personal injury case and maximizing your recovery. Your claim for compensation will need to be backed up with credible evidence, including written documents, witness statements, medical records and photographs. Therefore, whatever you can do along the way to preserve these critical pieces of evidence, will help you to maximize your recovery of fair compensation for your injuries.
Examples of evidence you can gather for your personal injury case:
- Photos – take as many photos as you can of the accident scene, including the location and of anything that caused the injury.
- Witnesses - Collect names and contact information of all witnesses to the injury
- Documents - Gather and save critical documents such as: police reports, copies of any correspondence from anyone involved in the incident, insurance company bills and medical records.
#2. Get medical treatment right away
This is a vital tip to help ensure you receive fair compensation for your personal injury. Don’t suffer in silence. If you are experiencing any new symptoms, it’s important that you have them checked out by a competent medical provider. Waiting to get treatment not only results in needless suffering, but it can result in a worse outcome due to delayed medical treatment.
Documentation of your injuries and symptoms by a medical provider is also critical to your ability to prove your damages. Your description after the fact of your injury and how you feel will be helpful, but the most important piece of evidence that you will provide in order to encourage the other side to come to the table and offer a higher settlement, comes in the form of medical records.
#3. Take a social media sabbatical
Stay off social media. Even if you think your social media presence is protected or private- it is not. Insurance companies and defense attorneys regularly access your social media presence, whether you know it or not - your posts are being scrutinized to assess your credibility and can affect the outcome of your personal injury claim.
The safest course is to go on a social media holiday. Don’t change anything that already exists, because that could be seen as destruction of evidence - something you must never do. However, there is no reason to create new evidence. Therefore, the best advice is to stop posting all together, or at a minimum, avoid making any posts discussing any aspect of your personal injury case.
For New Hampshire cases, our personal injury attorney offers a free consultation and over 20 years experience helping individuals and families get the compensation they deserve. Visit our Personal Injury Attorney FAQ page to view a list of commonly asked questions and learn more about personal injury in New Hampshire.