Welcome to our first blog in what will hopefully be a regular series brought to you by Mullins & Treacy! In these blog posts we’ll be bringing hints, tips, tricks and news that may be of interest to you! If there’s anything you’d like us to cover, please get in touch!

How to be a DIY Solicitor

So, you’ve had an accident that wasn’t your fault? Big medical bills and not sure who’s going to pay for it? You’re first instinct may be to do all the legal bits yourself. Compensation without representation. Sure, it’s only a bit of form filling, what can be so difficult?

First off, how much are you entitled to? You were out of work for 2 weeks due to your injury, do you just claim for lost wages? What about pain and suffering? The aftercare?

You didn’t have the money at the time to get the proper healthcare. You approached your insurance people but they put you on the long finger so you had to shell out for all your medical expenses right then and there. Guess you won’t be taking that weekend away during the summer now.

Next will be their insurance company approaching you. Oh, they’re going to offer you a week of missed wages, as they believe you could’ve gone back to work sooner…okay, not what you hoped for but hey, at least it’s something! Surely, they care a bit about you and how the accident affected you, they did approach you pretty quickly after the accident.

It’s now 3 months later and there’s a niggling in your injury, you wake up one morning and you’re in so much pain! But the doctor is so expensive, maybe if you just rest up for a while it’ll go away on its own. Ah, but now you’ve missed another week of unpaid work. Maybe this was why the insurance company approached you so quickly?

You’ve now had to take out a loan to cover your expenses that were so much more than what you settled for. Maybe not having any representation wasn’t such a great idea.

Our thoughts

Basically, you do what you do best. Whether you’re a butcher, baker or candlestick maker, that’s your forte. Ours is law. We come across cases like this all of the time. We know exactly how much the case is worth after a short chat with you. We know exactly what you are rightly entitled to. We also know when the right time is to bring a claim against someone. So often people want to claim and settle as quickly as possible. This is the worst possible idea. No one can know if there has been long term affects from your accident. If you settle too soon then you lose out on a whole lot more.

We deal with insurance companies all the time. We speak their language, we know their jargon and we definitely know when they are trying to ‘fob’ you off. We have no problem getting down to the nitty gritty and making sure these insurance companies pay out what YOU are entitled to. The job of an insurance company is to pay you as little as they can possibly get away with. Our job is to make sure you get exactly what you deserve.

So often injuries can manifest at a later stage than when the accident happened. Most people wouldn’t even know how or why to factor this in. We make sure you get the right and proper healthcare to make sure you can stay in tip top shape, and that this accident doesn’t negatively impact your life for too long.

All cases have to go through the PIAB (Personal Injury Assessment Board), but they can only rule on cases when liability has been admitted. This is when whoever you are claiming against has admitted that it was their fault you were injured. After 15 months of deliberations, the insurance company could reject the liability claim and then you end up going to court with no evidence.

Once you commence an action against someone with us, we will have one of our qualified engineers conduct a specialised report about your accident on your behalf and we’ll seek the cost of the report from the insurance company so you don’t have to pay! This way the liability of your claim is in black and white and the evidence has been preserved!

The PIAB is meant to be impartial, but did you know that they cannot negotiate on your behalf about your claim? Where the insurance company have admitted liability, they do not have to accept the assessment amount laid out by the PIAB. So, in that case, the PIAB have told the insurance company to pay X amount, but the insurance company may turn around and say ‘Well we don’t agree with that, so we’re not paying’. There is nothing the PIAB can do at this point to make them pay. We at Mullins & Treacy however, can!

Our Case Study on being a DIY Solicitor

The PIAB claim to help you with their signs posted around doctor’s surgeries, online and in magazines. We came across an employee who had had an accident in her workplace. She went through the PIAB and got all the forms and filled them out, claiming the accident against the company that was labelled on her pay check. It was discovered two years later that the employee was suing the wrong person. She should’ve been suing the legal entity of the company and not the trading name of the company. This was simply a matter of the wrong name filled out on a form that the PIAB should’ve pointed out for correction. They didn’t. Once two years have elapsed since an accident, the accident becomes statute barred which means you cannot bring a claim against anyone. Even though this employee did everything she could, she was unable to make a claim as it was now too late.

The PIAB claim to be on your side and want to help you get compensation without representation. The application form contains so many hidden hurdles, loopholes and traps that even if you spend all day, everyday decoding all the fields, you will miss something.

We are client focused and results driven. If you’d like help on filing a claim, we’d love to help! Give us a call on 051 391 488 or email reception@mullinstreacy.ie for a no obligation discussion about how we can help you!

Before you go…

It’s not just personal injury we specialise in! We are also experts in:

How To Be A DIY Solicitor