The straight answer is yes – you can fire your current personal injury attorney.
You can let them go for any reason or for no reason at all. But think long and hard before you make that decision. Most clients who are unhappy with their attorney cite a lack of communication as the main reason. People want to know where their case is heading and what their accident lawyer is doing to move it forward. My experience is that many of these issues can be resolved during a sit down face to face meeting with the injury attorney handling the case.
When you chose your injury attorney, you did so for a good reason.
Whether it was through a referral from a trusted colleague or friend or through your own research. The personal injury lawyer you initially hired had the opportunity to investigate it from the outset putting them in a good position to move the case forward.
Not to say that you should never fire your accident lawyer, but before you do that it is usually in your best interests to at least try to reconcile whatever problems you are having with their office.
If you can’t even have that sit down meeting, then chances are that your decision to find a new accident lawyer to handle your injury case is made for you.
In that scenario, the process of hiring a new personal injury attorney is quite simple really. You will not need to speak to your old lawyer again. You will select your new accident attorney with whom you feel comfortable. Then that new attorney will inform the old accident lawyer that they are no longer working on the case. Your personal injury file will then be forwarded to your new file after paying for costs and disbursements.
One important thing to note is that if you do decide to hire a new attorney, you would not have to pay two separate attorneys’ fees. The same 1/3 contingency would be split between the accident lawyers who worked on the case and the overall cost for you would not change.
