The most common question we hear from clients is – How much is my case worth?! This is natural because after all if one is to embark on the journey of retaining an attorney one should know the expected or most likely outcome. However, this question is actually more complicated than one might imagine. It is important not to fall into the trap of the answer you want to hear vs the truth.
Lots of law firms over-promise with the sole purpose of landing the cases. Afterward, they slowly hint that the case is not worth that much. And eventually, they under-deliver. So if your case is worth $50,000 you get promised $100,000, which induced you to retain that firm instead of another but you ultimately recover much less than $50,000. This is unfortunate because an honest firm that knows how to properly assess cases would have valued your case at $50,000, been honest about it and delivered you at least $50,000 in the end.
Typically those who over-promise under delivery. Most likely because if an attorney knows what he is doing, he can logically assess and explain the value of the case correctly and he does not need to lie to convince you to give him the case because he has plenty of cases. An attorney who does not know well enough cannot assess the property and is desperate to get cases. Thus he resorts to making inflated promises and fails to deliver good results because he is not skilled enough to know what the max value of the case is and how to achieve such a result.
How to avoid being a victim of an over promise and under-delivered outcome? Use basic logic and demand logic from your attorney. Ask not only how much your cares are worth but also why! If the logic makes sense then it’s most likely true. If it does not make sense then it’s likely false. Don’t try to push your desired outcome and encourage the lawyer to agree. Let him assess on his own and give you the logic behind his assessment.
Often times clients set themselves up for a fall. They decide that their case is worth a set sum, most often the desired sum that has nothing to do with the actual value of their cases (client needs $100,000 to buy a house so he decides his case is worth $100,000). Then clients look for an attorney who will agree with them instead of looking for an attorney who will give them an accurate estimate of their case value. What happens then? They end up hiring the shadiest dishonest attorney among those they contact. The one who is willing to feed them their own false hope by saying their case is worth $100,000 gets the case. In the end, if the case was never worth more than $10,000 the attorney who got the case settles it for a sum between $5,000 and $10,000 and the client has no real choice to avoid that outcome.
The honest attorney is the one who in the above example straight up assesses the case to be worth $10,000 on day one and says he will try to get more if at all possible. Then he works his skills and magic to get that sum or more. In the end, there are no surprises.
As the old saying goes – if something is too good to be true it’s likely false.
We are the Margarian Law Firm pride ourselves on providing honest and accurate legal advice from day one. If your case is $1 or $100,000 or $5,000,000 we will be honest about it, explain the laws and logic behind our assessment and fight to get you that much or more. Our many years of experience allow us to quickly assess cases and predict the most likely outcome. And because we are not struggling to find clients we do not desire to convince clients to hire us if for any reason they do not wish to do so. We will never over-promise or underperform. We prefer to predict the most likely outcome and then over-perform to attain an even better, unexpected and phenomenal outcome. Talk to us before you make a final decision when picking an attorney. If you do not like us we are not the firm for you. If you like us, our logical reasoning, our candor and deep assessment of your case than we are the ideal firm to handle your case. Call us today for a free consultation, 818.553.1000.
