DO YOU NEED A LAWYER IF THE HOSPITAL OR DOCTOR WANTS TO SETTLE OUT OF COURT? YES.
The hospital risk manager or claims adjuster is very experienced at handling claims, and they will certainly be very polite and even sympathetic. BUT, their actual job is to pay you as little as they can get away with paying to get you to sign a release. That is the duty they owe to their client, whether their client is the hospital, doctor, or malpractice insurance company that employs them.
Almost always, third parties like private health insurance or other groups like Medicare or Medicaid will have paid for your medical care, and if so, they have an automatic lien against your settlement money. In other words, if you settle your case you MUST pay them back out of your settlement proceeds, and it is a crime if you fail to do so. In order to understand how much you will net from a settlement offer, a lawyer can help you determine who you have to pay back, and how much. A lawyer can even help you negotiate with those third parties and very often obtain major discounts on how much you have to pay back.
Bottom line, every malpractice case is different and unless you have years of experience in handling medical malpractice settlements, it’s hard for you to fully understand how much your case is worth. A lawyer can help you figure out how much your case is worth and your lawyer’s duty is make sure you get full compensation for your damages.
SHOULD YOU REPRESENT YOURSELF IN COURT? NO.
The doctor or hospital will hire a top-notch lawyer who specializes in defending medical malpractice claims. The defense will try to fight your claim by using complicated legal rules and procedure that you might not know about or understand. If you miss one of these procedural rules, your case may very well be thrown out. You might even get a judgment entered against you ordering you to pay the other side’s lawyers’ fees and expenses.
There is an old saying that when a lawyer represents himself in a personal legal matter, he has a fool for a client. It is equally true that people who are not lawyers should never represent themselves in court.