Is Hiring a Personal Injury Lawyer Right for You?

In today’s society, it is easy to dismiss injuries from accidents or claiming “there is nothing we can do about it”. Unfortunately, many people fail to realize that these injuries may permanently cripple their life and their enjoyment if left untreated. Combined with rising medical costs and expensive treatments, it is virtually impossible to pay for these costs since many injuries are not covered by the provincial or state insurance, popularly known in Ontario as the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP). The government also cannot compensate for out of pocket expenses, lost earnings and general pain and suffering that an injured person goes through.

What many people don’t know is that injuries caused by accidents can result in possible financial settlement if you find the right legal representative to assist you in claiming damages. At Opara Law PC, as personal injury professionals, we can help you examine to the extent of liabilities from the other party that cause the injury, and further help you reclaim costs from medical expenses, treatments, lost earnings etc. Consider the following points when hiring a personal injury lawyer:

Is your Case Actionable?

One of the first hurdles is knowing whether your case is actionable, that is, whether you can sue or not. Personal injury can cover many different kinds of accidents such as motor vehicle accidents, faulty product injuries, assaults, slip and falls and many more. Most personal injury law is governed by a set of common laws known as torts. Without legal training, it is hard to differentiate which incidents are considered torts and allows victim to claim damages.  Here are a few tips to help you if you are unsure whether your motor vehicle accident, slip and fall, or personal injury is caused by torts:

Intentional Tort – if the injury was caused deliberately by another person, then there is a high possibility that the person doing the harm is liable for damages. There are many intentional torts that cross over to criminal law, hence it is important to know that tort and criminal law are two very different and distinct areas of law. A person who is found “not guilty” in a criminal proceeding may still find themselves in tortuous liability. 

Unintentional Tort– if the injury was caused solely by accident, you will have to consider all the circumstances that led to the accident. If someone was being reckless, it is possible to claim damages for negligence. If the person who did the harm did not safeguard themselves to prevent the accident from happening, that person may be held tortuously liable for the motor vehicle accident, slip and fall or personal injury.

In any case, if you are unsure whether your case is actionable or not, it is better to consult a lawyer. At Opara Law PC, we provide free consultations for all personal injury related matters, including motor vehicle accident, pedestrian accidents, motorcycle accidents, bicycle accidents, long term disability, short term disability, slip and fall, trip and fall, accident benefits claims, home insurance claims, air flight accidents, brain injuries, orthopedic injuries, chronic pain, wrongful dismissal claims, toxic mould exposure, automotive recalls, drug recalls, pharmaceutical warnings, asbestos exposure, mesothelioma, airline warnings, workplace suspensions, among others. As personal injury lawyer, we are skilled and trained professionals in recognizing laws regarding torts generally and personal injury in particular. Therefore, we can help you make the right decisions to address your personal injury concerns. 

Know Your Own Case

After a motor vehicle accident personal injury, it is easy to be confused about what to do. Motor vehicle accidents that lead to long lasting damage, also called catastrophic damages, such as loss of consciousness (coma) or broken limbs can be difficult to forget both physically, psychologically and emotionally. However, it is important to know the details of your personal injury no matter how minor the details may be. Here are some tips to consider when you want know more about your own case along with some sample questions:

Who? – Who are the parties involved in the incident? Is the person you are claiming damages from your employer? Your neighbor? Or someone else entirely? Are you the only person injured? Or were there other parties also injured as well?

What? – What exactly happened at the scene of the accident? What are some possible causes to the accident? 

When? – When did the accident happen? Did it happen at night or daytime? Was it snowing or clear? Was it raining or normal weather?

Where? – Where did the accident happen? Was the place a public or private area? Was the area cordoned off as dangerous? What is the closest intersection to the location? 

Why? -  Why did the accident happen? Was someone being neglectful or negligent of their duty? Did someone forget a particularly safety precaution? Did someone fail to do what they were required to do?

Being Realistic About Cost Recovery

While it is acceptable to be upset or angry at the parties that caused the injuries, it is not acceptable to use the legal system as a means of vengeance. The purpose of claiming damages from the other party is to recover the monetary amounts stemming from medical/treatment expenses, lost earnings and for a certain extent of pain and suffering from the injury. It is inappropriate to ask personal injury lawyers to claim additional damages that are unreasonable, especially if the lawyers have already calculated an amount for the case. Any sort of monetary claim will need to be justified in court and backed up with evidence.  Here is a list of things to consider when calculating the costs:

What is the extent of the injuries? – How much damage did you suffer from the personal injury? Grievous injuries are likely to attract more damages than minor injuries.

How long did it take for recovery AND rehabilitation? – A person may have to go through several months, if not years of recovery to resume their normal activities. It is wise to keep track and anticipate how much time you need to recover. 

How did the accident affect you psychologically? – Injuries (especially catastrophic injuries also called long lasting injuries) can be very traumatic to the personal injury victim or pedestrian. They might suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or acquire a phobia that can be related to the accident (one frequent example is recurring nightmares for those in serious car accidents and constant headache). It is important to note the state of your mental health. If there has been a recommendation for psychological evaluations, it is possible to claim additional damages for treatment.

Remember that if the claim is too ludicrous or exaggerated, it is possible for the courts to reduce the damages claimed even if the action was successful. On the other hand, the court can deem an unrealistic claim to be vexatious and dismiss the case altogether if it does not appear to have merit. Thus, it is important to be realistic, honest and forthright when calculating damages.

Helping the Lawyer Help You

If you are unsure of anything relating to personal injury, it is always better to ask your lawyer before proceeding to do anything. We are here at Opara Law PC to assist you and answer all your questions. A common misconception for the injured party is to feel entitled to damages. The circumstances leading to the accident plays an important role in determining whether the injured party is entitled to damages and what the amount of the damages should be. An injured party’s carelessness might result in contributory negligence, thereby reducing his recovery or completely shutting them out from recovering damages. Regardless of the sense of entitlement, the most important thing is to be consistent under the law. There are strict procedures that the lawyer must abide by to maximize the chance of success in your case. Even if you know something that might hurt your case, it is better to be candid about your facts and tell your personal injury so that they see what they can do to remedy the situation. At Opara Law PC, we strive to package your case to realize maximum damages for you.  

Ultimately, our personal injury professionals at Opara Law PC are here to help you claim the money that you deserve from your personal injury.  Let us help you better.

Finding Top Expert Injury Lawyers

Where Can I Find a Personal Injury Attorney Referral:

Friends, Friendlies and Family

The first thing to do is to speak to friends, family and coworkers who were once injured and had already had an experience with an Injury lawyer who had represented them in their personal injury lawsuit claims. If your friend, family or coworkers had good experiences with their accident lawyers, put that particular lawyer on your list of legal counselors to speak with. In all events, never make a decision about retaining a particular lawyer just because someone said he or she was good. Everyone has a different responses to an injury lawyer's particular style or lack thereof, as well as personality or lack thereof. Don't make a decision until you have researched the lawyer's bar record and check their online verdicts and settlements information, as well as having discussed your case, its pitfalls and strong points and then having decided that you are at ease working with him or her.

Legal Groove's Lawyer Directory

Legal Groove offers a totally different worldwide and human edited lawyer directory that contains free legal forms, legal articles, bios and legal profiles for each attorney. This is the type of free information that will guide you through the accident attorney selection process. The lawyer profiles can tell you about your lawyer's experiences, his or her legal education, percentage contingency fees, and their vision of the practice of law. Legal Groove has made a determination that as of the listing date, each lawyer listed in the groove directory has a valid law license/bar card and is in good standing with their prospective licensing agency, bar association. Every lawyer in most countries takes an oath to communicate regularly with their clients.

Legal Groove assures that its listed attorneys will provide you a free estimate of the time and cost, if any, involved in your contingency fee case. Groove also takes care to ask its attorneys to provide you with a written retainer agreement that spells out how each attorney will litigate your legal claims in Court. Legal Groove's lawyer directory covers California, Nevada, Arizona and other countries like the United Kingdom and even Germany.

Other Law Firms

Another great way in finding experienced injury lawyers is to get referral from other experienced personal injury lawyers in other states or cities not in the jurisdiction where your lawsuit will be filed. Lawyers regularly refer cases to each other. Many injury lawyers will know someone who litigates plaintiffs' injury claims. As with all referrals, do your own independent research too!

We hope you have enjoyed this free article on finding experienced injury lawyers that was provided by excellent Toronto personal injury attorneys. Our Toronto car accident attorneys want to help.

Study: Location, Firm Size Key to Billing Rates

Law Firm

The September issue of The American Lawyer Offers a preview of the Real Rate Report, a study produced by CT - TyMetrix Inc., a company that audits Law Firm bills, and The Corporate Executive Board Co., a company that provides best practices research and analysis. They studied the bills sent to 36 large corporate clients between 2007 and 2009 -- more than $4 billion worth of time sheets submitted by 90,000 people at 3,500 firms. They scrubbed the data to protect the identity of the billers and the billed. Then they got to work crunching the numbers.

A lot of interesting statistics jump out. For starters, legal bills increased at rates that exceeded inflation, in-house Lawyers who spent more at a particular law firm were not getting any discounts, and partner status added nearly $100 on average to a lawyer's rate regardless of experience.

But what most struck us about the report was its portrayal of an industry fraught with inconsistency. The vast majority of lawyers -- 85 percent -- charge clients different rates for the same work. The location of the biller and the size of the biller's firm -- not the biller's experience -- are the variables that most influence how much a client will pay. And though in-house counsel talk a good game about keeping rates in check, they approve almost three-fourths of all timekeepers' rate hikes.

What They Can Do For You - Business Lawyers

Business lawyers and attorneys can advise you on how to properly structure your business, (be it through a sole proprietorship, partnership, joint venture, corporation), on how to deal with disputes that may have arisen during the course of your business operations, or on how to dissolve the business. With respect to the latter, it is worth mentioning that I have and am dealing with a number of business dissolution here in Toronto (it may be the poor economic times?). There are a number of issues which come up which you may not realize (i.e. unless you're a lawyer and you are trained on and deal with these things regularly). Typically, these issues include:

* Division of business assets.

* Responsibility for business liabilities - particularly the lease, supplier agreements, employment agreements, and tax obligations.

* Preparing the necessary paperwork (e.g. bookkeeping, taxes, government forms) to dissolve the business.

* Ensuring compliance with the business' internal documents (e.g. partnership agreement, corporate by-laws and resolutions, shareholder agreements, and articles of incorporation, etc.).

* Informing customers (both past and present), employees, and other stakeholders of what is happening with the business.

At the end of the day, you will likely need a number of documents and agreements prepared by a business lawyer in order to help oversee the business dissolution. For example, you should have a lawyer explain the various options and then draft some type of dissolution agreement for all the parties to sign off on. Next, you may need your lawyer to draft and/or negotiate terminate and release of liability agreements for landlords and suppliers, etc. Finally, your lawyer may be called upon to prepare the government forms to submit in order to dissolve the corporation. Finally, if business partners take issue with and dispute the steps along the way towards dissolution, then lawyers may be also called upon to try to negotiate a settlement or resolve the issues through litigation.

In any event, you should definitely consult a business lawyer before trying to do any of these things yourself. Doing so will save you time, money and aggravation in the long run and make sure that your rights are protected and your interests

Business lawyers and attorneys can also help you understand your legal rights and obligations with respect to your business. They can tell you if a particular course of action could be challenged by (1) breaching a private contract, (2) giving rise to a possible tort liability, and/or (3) violating a statute or regulation established by the government.

Source: Ezinearticles

Advantage of being a Top Lawyer in Toronto

It is obvious that being a top lawyer is going to be a bit different in Toronto than being a lawyer in a small town with about 15,000 residents. Along with increasing responsibility there is always a big opportunity in such big cities, as the citizens of such cities are educated enough to fight for their rights. Much of it has to do with the fact that people are no longer afraid to sue when something happens to them and these is possible only if they are educated enough to take right decision. At one time, an individual could have pain inflicted on them by another person or even a company and they would let it roll off their back. That has changed drastically because people are tired of becoming victims and letting it slide. Lawyers in small cities have these cases as well, but lawyers in big cities have a larger potential customer base and they thrive on that. That is great because that means a better income, a better reputation, and leads to even more excitement.

Being a lawyer in the big city means the cases are going to be a bit more diverse. With more people come more unique situations in which a lawyer is needed. This gives the lawyer the opportunity to set a standard in law when a legitimate and unique case comes their way. The excitement alone is hard to contain and then there is that income and reputation factor. In small towns, the income ceiling is a bit lower because there is only so much to work with. If you are a small town with ten lawyers, then the earning potential is not as high. However, a lawyer in a large city such as Toronto has an incredibly higher earning potential.
It is obvious that each lawyer has to compete with another in terms of quality of service and marketing to capture the market as many of them will target such a vast market and these competition factors makes the profession even more exciting. Lawyers in small cities do have competition amongst each other, but lawyers in big cities have more lawyers to compete with and a larger playground to compete on. The sky is pretty much the limit in this area and that can make ad campaigns, signs, and other advertising media a lot of fun. As a lawyer in a big city, you have the money to do it so run with it. The only thing to lose is being one of the top lawyers, if not the top lawyer, in the city. Many big cities are now getting to the point where they offer awards and other types of recognition for lawyers who have done something exceptional, so you want that case that is going to get you that recognition. More recognition means you're going to get more clients. Most importantly, you're going to be upholding the law and being in a bigger city allows you an even larger opportunity to do just that. And that is why being a lawyer in Toronto definitely has its perks.

Your Toronto Personal Injury Lawyer

A Personal Injury Lawyer Toronto is a specialist that helps people receives compensation for injuries. Toronto Injury Lawyers are the ones who focus and know all the rules with regards to suffering of those who are the sufferers of accidents. There are lots of lawyers that understand the law in making sure the rights of the victims are fully defended. These lawyers help the injured get their most compensation from their accidents such as vehicle accidents, slip and fall injuries. It doesn’t matter the kind of accident you may have to deal with, these Toronto Personal Injury Lawyers are the best in getting you the right award.

Business Law and necessity of Privacy Policies for business through Online Mode

If you are involved in running a businesses, you should be familiar with the law surrounding businesses and their relationship with other parties (might be a complicated one). Business law is meant to keep businesses in line with the law, as well as internal businesses problems, like workers compensation and trading disputes. One of the most common problems that most businesses face is how to resolve their disputes. These disputes can range from internal employee problems to defending a business from the federal government. Whatever the situation may be, there are several methods that business lawyers use to help resolve business disputes.

We all know that there are various mode of doing business, when the business is done through online medium the situation becomes more complicated . Hope many of you have noticed that most website include links to their "Privacy Policies" near the bottom on their home pages. You might have even tried to read through one of these Privacy Policies and understand what their purpose. They are so much legalese that it might be hard to figure out what it meant, and why it was there. If you are looking to maximize the protection of your online assets, you need to prepare and properly implement an appropriate privacy policy on your website.

Let's start with what privacy policies are, and how to prepare one that's best suited for your web-based business.

What are Privacy Policies?

A privacy policy is a written statements that sets forth the terms and conditions under which your website handles the personal information that it obtains from anyone who visits the site. There is no required length or standard form for a privacy policy, though many of them contain the same kind of terms and language. The Purpose for preparing your own website privacy policy are accuracy and clarity. First and foremost, your privacy policy should describe the things you do or might do with the personal information you collect from your website visitors.

As a starting point, your privacy policy should contain the following elements:

1. Identify the types of personal information your website collects about its visitors.
2. Describe how you use the information that is given by or collected from your visitors.
3. Describe how a website user can review and make changes to their personal information, if that's an option available to them.
4. Describe how you will declare changes to your privacy policy.
5. Provide your contact information.

Thought it is not compulsory for each types of business to have a privacy policy but it can safeguard you from any such future business liability. It is believed that those who collect any personal information from their visitors , then they must have a privacy policy apart from that it is not compulsory to have it. Not having an accurate privacy policy can expose your business to liability in a number of different ways.The first is that you might face liability under a growing number of state laws aimed at protecting consumer privacy.

If you haven’t yet prepared any such privacy policy or if you think of making a start than you don't need to start from scratch when you prepare your privacy policy. There are a number of resources available on the Internet that will serve as great starting points for your own privacy policy. But beware of simply copying another website's privacy policy word for word. This will increase the chances that the policy doesn't match what you do with your customers' personal information.

Take the time to make sure that the privacy policy actually matches the way you do your business, and meets the minimum standards. If you have the resources, consult with a qualified advisor to make sure the proposed privacy policy works for you and your business. This will help you maximize the protection afforded to your online assets.

Personal Injury Lawyers: File a Claim Learn Your Rights

There are different types of accidents that may happen. Of course nobody wants to experience being a victim of an accident. If the accidents happen due to the negligence of another party or institution, then it is known as Personal injury.The injurer may be held liable depending on the damages that the victim sustained. The victim has the right to ask the right compensation from the injurer depending on the pain, suffering and medical expenses of the victim. It is also the right of the victim to ask for loss of salary. Relatives, family and friends can also claim for compensation.
There are lots of incidents that may happen. Time may come that you are driving a car when somebody hit you accidentally. Vehicular accidents are just a sample of those possible accidents that may happen. Accidents may also be in the form of slip and fall, product malfunction, malpractice of profession, workplace accidents and a lot more. And because of these accidents, if you are the victim it is just right that you have to seek the help of a Toronto personal injury lawyer. Normally if the damages are light there is no necessity of filing a case but once it is severe it might be loss of someone's life. For this, the victim has to file a case against the responsible party or institution and seek for compensation. if you are filing a case against the injurer, you have to seek the help of a Toronto personal injury lawyer. The lawyer is held responsible in representing you in the court and guides you legally with the procedure. Make sure that you are hiring someone that is knowledgeable and expert in the field. He is held responsible in filing legal complaint in the court. They are the one who are responsible in gathering evidences and gather all the statements of the witnesses. They have to make sure that all important information related to the case is gathered in order to prove that there is a case.

One of the main responsibilities of the lawyer is to seek justice for all the damages that their clients sustained and these is possible only if he gathers all the important evidence They have to help their clients to seek the right compensation that they deserve. But all of his duties and responsibilities should always be according to the legal standards of the law. Make sure that the Toronto personal injury lawyer that you are going to hire is loyal to you and makes everything confidential in order to protect your interest. If you experience personal injury, it is important to seek the help of a Toronto personal injury lawyer immediately in order to seek justice immediately. It will be easier to file the case if you will address it immediately. Toronto personal injury lawyers usually do some assessments first before accepting the case. They have to prove that there is a case before filing the case in the court. But due to higher cost of litigation, lawyers usually recommend out of court settlements. So be careful in hiring a lawyer that will represent you in the court.