The bottom line with the decision to hire a lawyer or any professional is are you hiring somebody who is competent and committed? Competent to handle the matter and committed so seeing it all the way through. These particular policies in this industry requires someone with some degree of specialized knowledge and experience in dealing with the issues. The main thing with hiring somebody who isn’t per se experienced in doing this is they may miss issues; they may not understand everything they need to in order to adequately handle the matter.
In this particular field, we’re dealing with statutes, Florida statutes, laws that address insurance matters, long term care matters, because there’s a specific statute that deals with home health agencies and nurse registries – what they’re allowed to do and what they’re not allowed to do and what they’re supposed to do. There’s a separate statute that deals with assisted living facilities and what they can do and licenses they need to have and what they’re not allowed to do. Then there are rules called administrative codes that expound or expand on what the statutes allow or prohibit. In order to be able to understand all the issues somebody has to be well versed in all of the statutes, all of the administrative rules and also understand how to read and dissect and I call it deconstruct and reconstruct these insurance policies. You have to have someone who can do all that in order to adequately represent you in these matters.
I believe that the contingency contract and that type of a relationship between the attorney and the client is an essential way of having an attorney-client relationship and the purpose of the contingency contract is to provide access to the courts for people who cannot afford to pay out of pocket $100 to $800 an hour for a lawyer. Most people can’t afford to do that. The companies that can afford to do that are these insurance companies. They can afford to pay their lawyers on an hourly basis but the insured people and average folks cannot afford to be paying their lawyer while they are working. I’ve always been a proponent of the contingency contract arrangement because it affords people access to the courts where they would not otherwise be able to go there.
I handle these particular cases even more so, I believe more in the contingency relationship in these types of cases because the individuals need money for care. If they’re having to pay me and their caregivers and everything else it’s going to create a major problem for them so I’m happy to provide contingency basis.