Advice Clients on How Long Settlement Will Be?
I wrote a page today advising injury victims on the question of how long their auto accident claim will take to settle. For lawyers, the best advice in terms of giving advise is to underpromise and overdeliver. Like construction, things typically, take longer than you anticipate or hope that they will. How do you predict how long the Plaintiff will receive treatment or who long the doctor will take to provide a medical opinion you need in your demand package?
Moreover, if the client has a multitude of health care providers, you can bet that at least one is going to be slow to respond.
The "take home message" is twofold. First, set expections low in terms of how long things will take, offering an expected range within a 98% confidence interval as opposed to an estimated date. Second, make sure you are doing everything you reasonably can to push the accident claim forward (without cutting any meaningful corners).
