More than 450 fatal accidents were reported in New Mexico in 2021. Even when you are driving with adequate care, you could end up in a car accident that wasn’t your fault. There is usually chaos after the crash, and most people have no clue what to do in the aftermath. New Mexico is a fault state, which means you have to file a claim with the at-fault party’s insurer to recover compensation. For someone who has never worked with insurance companies or has never initiated a claim, you could be out of your depths. That’s where you need to hire a reliable Rio Rancho car accident lawyer for your case. Does hiring an attorney really matter? We take a quick look at the key aspects.
Critical tasks that your accident lawyer will handle
- Before anything else, your lawyer will evaluate whether your accident claim is worth fighting. That’s often the first step because you may not have a case as you may assume. Sometimes, the expected compensation is so low that your attorney may advise you to accept whatever the insurance company offers. In other cases, lawyers take a more aggressive stance to get a fair settlement.
- Your lawyer will then start investigating the case, and that is about finding evidence and details that will help prove the fault of the other party. Even if you were partly responsible for the accident, you could recover a settlement, as New Mexico laws are quite simple. What you eventually recover depends on your fault, if any, but your lawyer is responsible for putting the case together.
- Because insurance companies are often so tough handling claims, you wouldn’t want to deal with everything independently. Instead of letting the claims adjuster handle things, your accident lawyer will step in and negotiate for you. This ensures that you don’t fall for the common tactics or end up saying things that can hurt your interests.
Your accident lawyer may need to work with experts to determine how things happened, and accident reconstruction is often a key part of investigating complex cases. The lawyer may have to even speak to medical experts about your injuries, and if the insurance company doesn’t make a fair offer, your lawyer will take the case to trial. Can you manage without a lawyer? Probably you can. However, this is not a gamble you would want to risk, especially because your settlement depends on that.
