The lawyer you choose is one of the most important factors in the success or failure of your case. It is a decision you should make with care. Unfortunately, choosing a lawyer can be intimidating for people who have never been through the process before. You may be justifiably concerned about ending up with a lawyer with bad ethics or poor skills. In this chapter, we hope to ease those fears and provide a basic guide to finding a personal injury lawyer.

The first thing to consider is that lawyers, much like doctors, often concentrate their practices in specific areas of the law. If you need hip replacement surgery, you would see an orthopedic surgeon, not a cardiologist. Similarly, if you are in an accident, you will not want to hire a lawyer who concentrates his practice on divorces, real estate, criminal or any other such type of law. Another type of lawyer may be able to help you, but he or she will not have the same experience and skills that a personal injury lawyer brings to a personal injury case. Personal injury lawyers understand the legal, procedural and evidentiary strategies that can maximize the value of your personal injury claim, because they work with these issues every day.

At our firm, we find that most of our clients come to us because of a recommendation from someone they know who has used us in the past. For that reason, we recommend that you begin the search by talking to your family and friends. Ask if anyone can refer you to a personal injury lawyer who helped them get good results, or who they have heard good things about.

If nobody you know can recommend a lawyer, you can also start by considering lawyer advertisements. You have probably seen lawyer ads on television, in newspapers or in the Yellow Pages. Consistent advertisements from a particular lawyer show that his firm has been practicing for all of that time, and is likely to have the experience and resources necessary to take on insurance companies. In fact, insurance companies sometimes decide whether or not they will settle a case before a trial based on the reputation and experience of your lawyer.

If you are comfortable with computers and the Internet, you can try an Internet search. Using a search engine like Google, Yahoo! or MSN, you can easily search by both your location and the legal specialty you need. There are many ways to search for this information. Here are a few tips that may be helpful:

1. Search for a phrase instead of a single word. "Auto accident lawyer" will probably turn up more useful results than just "lawyer."
2. Put the phrase you search for in quotes. This will tell the search engine to look for the entire phrase as you searched
for it, not the individual words in the phrase. Without quotes, your results will be greater in number but not nearly as relevant to your search. Just make sure to spell everything correctly.
3. Narrow your search by including some geographical information. For example, if your auto accident happened in New York, you might want to search for "New York auto accident lawyer." You need a lawyer in the state where the accident happened, even if that is not the state where you live or have legal residency.