Settling with the adjuster yourself, hiring a firm on contingency, or paying a lawyer by the hour to review the offer
A free consultation is usually described as the firm evaluating your case, which is half true and the less useful half. You are also evaluating them, and you get roughly forty minutes to do it, often with someone whose job title you never quite catch. The difference between a firm that will file suit and one that processes files toward whatever the insurer offers is not visible in the waiting room, the television spot, or the settlement figures on the wall. It shows up in four answers, and in how readily each one is given.
Who touches this file on an ordinary Tuesday
Ask for the name of the person who will call you back, and then ask what that person's role is: attorney, paralegal, case manager, or intake specialist. None of those answers is disqualifying, and a good paralegal running records requests is worth more to you than a partner who reads the file twice. What you are listening for is whether anyone can say the name at all. Ask how many open files that person carries, ask how often the attorney reviews the file, and ask who signs off before any number goes back to the adjuster.
Then ask the follow-up that most people skip, which is what happens when that person leaves. Staff turnover is ordinary in this work, and a firm with a real handoff procedure will describe it plainly: a supervising attorney, a written file summary, a call to you within a set number of days. A firm that has never thought about it will say the question does not come up. Write down whichever answer you get, along with the date, because it is the baseline against which the next nine months of phone calls get measured.
How many cases the lawyer has actually tried
The question is not how many cases the firm has resolved, which includes every file settled by letter, but how many the attorney sitting across from you has taken to a verdict, and when the most recent one was. A number in the single digits is not automatically a problem in a firm where a designated trial attorney handles the courtroom work. A vague answer is the problem. Ask which counties, ask what the case types were, and ask whether the same attorney would try yours or whether the file gets referred out to another firm with a fee split.
Insurance carriers keep their own institutional memory about which firms appear in court and which do not, and that memory is priced into the offers they make. You cannot see their files. You can see whether the lawyer in front of you answers the trial question with specifics or with a change of subject, and whether the answer is consistent with the way they describe negotiating. Ask directly whether they have tried a case against the carrier that insures the driver who hit you.
What happens the day you turn the offer down
Have the lawyer walk you through the calendar past the point where the adjuster's number is refused. Suit gets filed where, on what deadline, and at what filing cost. Who advances the money for the expert who will testify about your surgery, and what does a case like yours typically consume in costs by the time a trial date is set. Ask what the firm's costs advanced looked like on their last three tried cases, in ranges rather than precise figures, and ask whether the contingency percentage steps up once suit is filed, which is common and should be in writing.
What the agreement says if you part ways
Read the withdrawal and discharge clauses before you sign, because that is the paragraph written for the version of this relationship that does not work out. It should say what happens to costs already advanced, whether the firm asserts a lien on any later recovery, and whether the claim is for a share of the fee or for hours worked. Ask whether the file copy is yours on request and at whose expense. The Federal Trade Commission oversees how consumer services are advertised, but nothing in the advertisement governs you; the signed agreement does.
Bring the questions on paper and take notes in front of them. A firm that intends to try your case will not mind being interviewed, and the ones that do mind have told you something useful for free.