In this video, personal injury attorney Ted Spaulding reviews the process for negotiating with an insurance company and how to put yourself in the best possible position for success.
How do you negotiate with an insurance company?
Hi, I’m Ted Spaulding, an Atlanta personal injury trial lawyer, and the founder here at Spaulding Injury Law. Keep watching this video to find out some tricks of how to negotiate with an insurance company.
So, this is a difficult one for laypeople to figure out and for lawyers, like myself, to guide someone. It’s, quite frankly, why a lot of people need an injury lawyer to represent them, to negotiate for them.
But if it is a case that you’re wanting to negotiate yourself, or you talk with us or another lawyer, and we do recommend this from time to time that, “Hey, try to handle it on your own at first,” here’s a couple of things. The overarching way to negotiate is you’ve got to be negotiating from a standpoint of strength. And the only way to do that is to know what your claim components are that make up the value.
Insurance companies, when they’re dealing with an injured party instead of a lawyer, may try to trick that person. I’ve heard a lot of stories. For example, insurance adjuster saying, “Oh, well, we do not give you the full amount of your medical bills. We only give you what insurance paid.” That’s not true. Georgia law requires it to be the full amount of the medical bills. So, you’re not negotiating from a place of strength if you agree with them that, “Oh, it’s I’ll take just what my medical bills were paid by the insurance company, not the full amount of the bill.”
So, it’s that sort of stuff. You need to get all the treatment that you need first, to be able to negotiate from a position of strength. You need to do it well before the statute of limitations. That’s another way to negotiate from strength. That way they know, “Oh, if I don’t settle with this person, they may be going to an attorney.” Maybe even reach out to an attorney first, so you can truthfully say, “I have an attorney waiting in the wings, if we can’t get this resolved. Let’s try to work this out.”
Those are all ways to negotiate from strength. And if you can’t feel comfortable doing that, then that’s the answer, that you need an attorney. If you feel comfortable, go forth and conquer. Try to get this resolved without a lawyer. That’s always a great situation.
So anyway, this is a couple of tips on how to negotiate. If you have any questions or concerns, comment to this video below. Or if you have a case that you would like to discuss with me, to see if my firm can handle, be more than happy to talk to you. Go to my website, spauldinginjurylaw.com. You can call me. There’s two phone numbers: 770-744-0780 and 470-695-9950. Thank you for watching this video.
