Why Won't You Take My Case?

Attorneys at TheLawFirm.com are often asked ‘why won’t you take my case’?  There are many reasons why an attorney cannot or will not take a particular case.    
 
First, being a lawyer means being specialized.  Sometimes people assume that a lawyer knows the ‘law’.  That is just not true.  The law in the United States is very complex and there is a huge amount of it.  That is why every lawyer, to some degree, specializes.  Even a general lawyer, in say, a small town, would be unlikely to be practicing mass tort law.  At TheLawFirm.com, we focus on personal injury cases and suing Big Pharma for defective medical devices and bad drugs, car accidents or wrongful death.  So when someone calls us with a case, even a case that is important and legitimate, that is outside the areas of personal injury or mass torts, we have to decline to represent them.  The fact is we just aren’t familiar with the law outside these areas.  Or declining to take the case has absolutely no bearing on the case itself.  
 
A second reason we may decline a case is that it just isn’t a case.  Sometimes a person is hurt or upset but there is just no lawsuit there in our opinion.  Sometimes a person had a great case but the statute of limitations has expired and there is nothing we can do.  Sometimes, and this is often true with bad drug cases, we personally believe there is a case but we just can’t prove it.  For example, a person may have horrible side effects from a drug but we don’t have the medical or scientific evidence that connects the drug usage to that particular side effect.    
 
There is a practical reason why we sometimes decline cases.  The law in the United States allows people with certain types of cases to hire a lawyer on a contingency basis.  That means we don’t get paid unless we win.  Being a lawyer is like any other type of business: we have overhead, and lots of it.  A person calling may have a case, and even a good case, but the amount of work the case involves versus the value of the case may be out of proportion.  In other words, if a lawyer had to work 100 hours to earn a $1000 fee, she would unlikely take the case.  In these cases, a person may have a small claims case or may be able to hire a lawyer by the hour to advance the case.    
 
A final reason why the attorneys at TheLawFirm.com may decline your case is that, even within personal injury and mass torts, we don’t do everything.  We focus on energy on gathering certain types of cases.  It takes staff and money to money to manage and work on cases.  So, for example, if we are working on mass torts and someone calls with a case that may be legitimate, but is a ‘one-off’ for us, we may decline the case.     
 
We almost always recommend that a person contacting us explore other legal options.  If we decline your case, talk to another lawyer.  When we decline a case, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have no case but it does mean that we cannot help you.  After you speak to a few lawyers, you should have a sense if you have a case that a lawyer can help you with or not.