I’m sick and tired of insur­ance com­pa­nies tak­ing advan­tage of injured work­ers. If you are hurt on the job, you qual­ify for work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion ben­e­fits. Basi­cally you get all of your med­ical care paid with no co-pay and no deductible. You also get a weekly check equal to 2/3 of what you were mak­ing when you were hurt. While the con­cept sounds sim­ple, it can get very com­plex very fast.

The good news? You may not even need to hire a lawyer for your Geor­gia work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion case.

Whether you need to hire a lawyer depends on sev­eral things. It depends on:

• Whether you have a seri­ous injury
• How likely is it your injury will impact your finan­cial future
• Whether the insur­ance com­pany is fol­low­ing the law or jerk­ing you around
• Whether there will be a hear­ing with a judge
• Whether you want the best med­ical care or just some med­ical care
• Your abil­ity to deter­mine the full value of your case
• Your abil­ity to form a strat­egy based on the law and your facts
• Whether you trust the insur­ance com­pany to look after your interest

Seri­ous Injury — A minor injury where you just have a few med­ical vis­its and no impact on your future earn­ings doesn’t require a lawyer. The insur­ance com­pany will pay for a cou­ple of med­ical appoint­ments where you will be pre­scribed some pain or anti-inflammatory med­ica­tion and you will be back to work in no time. Case over, no need for a lawyer.

The more med­ical care you require, the longer you will be out of work, the more dif­fi­cult the insur­ance com­pany becomes to deal with and the more likely it becomes that the insur­ance com­pany will block or inter­fere with your med­ical care, even try­ing to influ­ence your doc­tor behind your back and you may not even real­ize it is going on.

Future Earn­ings – How will your injury affect your finan­cial future? Will you have per­ma­nent restric­tions? Will you be able to do the same type of work you have done in the past? Will you be able to earn the same amount of money in the future? If your injury has no impact on your abil­ity to make money in the future, you prob­a­bly don’t need a lawyer. On the other hand, the more likely your injury affects your abil­ity to earn money in the future, the more your finan­cial future is at risk, and the more likely it is that you need a com­pe­tent work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion lawyer over­see­ing your case.

Fol­low­ing the law – Geor­gia work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion has a lot of good law that helps injured work­ers. How­ever, if you don’t know the law, and if you are deal­ing with an insur­ance com­pany or employer who don’t fol­low the law, you will be miss­ing ben­e­fits and med­ical care you didn’t even know you had available.

Here is a good test to see if your insur­ance com­pany fol­lows the law or uses the law against you. Ask your­self this ques­tion: “who is pick­ing out your doc­tors?” the law says that when you got hurt, the employer must pro­vide you with a phys­i­cal list of doc­tors for YOU to select from. If you are deal­ing with an employer or insur­ance com­pany who doesn’t even fol­low the first and most basic law, they are cer­tainly not fol­low­ing other laws and you would have no way of know­ing it. A com­pe­tent work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion expert knows the law and can make sure it is fol­lowed in your case. If the law is not being fol­lowed, you are being jerked around. You may even get that feel­ing in your gut that some­thing just isn’t right but not know what it is.

The like­li­hood of a hear­ing – The only way to make the insur­ance com­pany and the employer fol­low the law is to file for a hear­ing and have a judge order them to do so. With a lawyer, the insur­ance com­pany is more likely to fol­low the law so they don’t have to go to a hear­ing and explain their bad con­duct. Sure, you can try call­ing and com­plain­ing to the employer/insurer, but with­out the threat of going to a hear­ing (and it is a very unwise thing to go to a hear­ing with­out a lawyer) they have no moti­va­tion to fol­low the law and no threat of going to a hear­ing. It is the rare case that doesn’t even­tu­ally require the fil­ing of a hear­ing. The more seri­ous the case, the more likely a hear­ing will be requested. If you don’t have a seri­ous injury, you’ll prob­a­bly be back to work in no time and never need a hear­ing. But, the more seri­ous the case, the more likely they will not fol­low all the laws that ben­e­fit you and the more likely you will need a lawyer to file for a hear­ing to make them do the right thing.

Qual­ity of med­ical care – you will get bet­ter med­ical care with a lawyer who knows which doc­tors have a his­tory of pro­vid­ing good work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion case vs. those who have a his­tory of merely pro­tect­ing the insur­ance company.

Valu­ing your case – If you have a small injury your case has lit­tle to no value any­way, so if you get a small amount for set­tle­ment and min­i­mal med­ical care, that’s prob­a­bly about right. But, if you have an injury that impacts your abil­ity to earn a liv­ing in the future and requires good exten­sive med­ical care, plac­ing a value on what you have lost can be tricky. Trust me, the insur­ance com­pany will not offer you full value if they think they can get away for less. I have plenty of sad sto­ries I have heard on this and will share them with you if you ask. A qual­i­fied work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion lawyer will know, based on your injury, need for future med­ical care, and lost earn­ings abil­ity how to value your case properly.

Case strat­egy – you can see all the Geor­gia work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion laws online. That’s the beauty of the Inter­net. But, you need to know, not only the law, but how they apply to your par­tic­u­lar fact sit­u­a­tion. Again, a small case requires lit­tle to no strat­egy. But, a knowl­edge­able lawyer can form a strat­egy for your case based on the law and the facts of your par­tic­u­lar case. It’s sort of the dif­fer­ence between know­ing how to play chess and know­ing how to beat a chess mas­ter, that’s done by get­ting your own chess mas­ter to tell you the next move to make. Like a chess game, good strat­egy is put in play early. You don’t wait till you are in trou­ble to fig­ure out a strat­egy. A good work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion lawyer can help you for­mu­late a strat­egy that will assure you the best med­ical care and the best pro­tec­tion for your finan­cial future.

Look­ing after your inter­est – If you have a small injury requir­ing lit­tle med­ical care and no lost time from work, the insur­ance adjuster can look after you as well as any old lawyer. But, if you have a seri­ous injury requir­ing exten­sive lost time and med­ical care, your own qual­i­fied Geor­gia work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion lawyer will be on your side look­ing after your inter­est. Think of this, his fee is set by the state at 25% of what­ever money he gets for you. I always tell my clients I have a self­ish motive to look after their inter­est. The more they get, the more I get. I want to look after BOTH of our finan­cial inter­ests. If you think the insur­ance com­pany will place your finan­cial inter­est above theirs, I have news for you.

Bot­tom line, If you have a seri­ous injury, you need a qual­i­fied Geor­gia work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion lawyer, if you have a small injury, you don’t even need to hire a lawyer.