The Fakhouri Firm is a personal injury law firm dedicated to protecting the legal rights of victims who have sustained catastrophic injuries or were killed because the wrongful conduct of others.
Robert S. Fakhouri, founder and leading lawyer of the Fakhouri Firm, explained the process with which his clients can expect the most optimal service and care.
Haute Lawyer: How do you maximize the pain and suffering category of damages for clients?
Robert S. Fakhouri: We have uniquely positioned our law firm to have direct communication with our clients, whether it’s via e-mail or over the phone. The substances of these conversations are always documented in order to keep a contemporaneous record of what they’re going through as their case is progressing.
This is extremely effective in maximizing the walk-away amount. The goal in personal injury is always to place an individual in a position in which they would have been had the issue not taken place. When other law firms simply reach out to their clients to ask for an update on their medical care and aren’t asking the important questions of how this is affecting their daily life, they miss out on maximizing the pain and suffering category. At the end of the day, personal injury lawyers are there to tell the insurance company or the at-fault party how this situation has affected their client’s day to day living.
For example, we recently resolved a case involving an avid runner who was able to show us support and documentation on a soft tissue case that led to a $365 thousand settlement. This was possible because we got to know exactly how this affected her. She was someone who ran 10 miles three, to five times a week. Unfortunately, after this incident, she stopped running completely. Understanding the gravity and the effect on an individual is key to maximizing the value on their case.
HL: Would you say the way in which you archive your clients’ information leads you to have an advantage in the courtroom?
RSF: Every case is different and we’re not always going to get direct evidence to support every effect on an individual’s day to day life. What my firm is able to do, is the case manager assigned to each case file is able to ask the important questions and get the right information from our clients to determine if there is evidence that corroborates their unique effect.
In the aforementioned case of the runner, she had an app which documented all of her running prior to the incident that took place. She completely stopped using the app because she was forced to stop running. We were able to pull a log from that data to show the insurance company the frequency in which she would engage in physical activity before, and how it came to a complete standstill after.
HL: How would you say these strategies compare to the average personal injury law firm?
RSF: The difference is in the way in which we are communicating with our clients and making sure that that communication is effective to their case. What sets us apart and makes us different from other law firms is our ability to have multiple individuals on each case file to make sure that all that information is archived together.
Your run of the mill firm just waits to see when a client is done treating and then submits a demand. That, in effect, will cause a client’s case value to diminish significantly, when all you’re looking for is, ‘what’s their medical treatment and when are they done treating?’ Unfortunately, this is common practice.
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