Of course. Understanding legalese can be confusing. We do our best to keep the legal jargon to a minimum when communicating with our clients, but we understand that some words we take for granted as normal may actually be confusing to someone without a legal background.
Here are a few common words and phrases that you might hear while working with a Montgomery County personal injury attorney:
- Negligence is a legal concept that refers to a wrongful, but not intentional, action or omission that causes harm to someone else.
- Damages are the sum-total of the harm that someone’s wrongful actions caused. Damages come in two general types: economic and non-economic. Economic damages consist of harms that have a direct, out-of-pocket, financial cost associated with them, such as medical bills or lost wages. Non-economic damages refer to harms that do not have a price tag associated with them, but are no less real and significant as those that do, such as pain, emotional distress, and loss of companionship.
- Liability is the word lawyers use to refer to someone having a legal obligation to pay damages for an injury.
- Comparative negligence stands for the idea that sometimes more than one person or entity takes wrongful action that causes damages, making it necessary to compare the degrees of negligence to figure out how much liability they each have.
- Statute of limitations is the time limit set by law for taking legal action for damages in a particular circumstance.
- Contingency or contingent fee is how personal injury lawyers get paid. Instead of billing their clients by the hour or by the legal service performed, personal injury lawyers and their clients agree on a percentage the lawyer will receive of any financial settlement or jury award. This arrangement helps to put lawyers and their clients on the same wavelength; the more money the lawyer gets for the client, the more money the lawyer earns.
- Letter of protection is a document a lawyer may send to a medical provider promising to pay medical services out of any personal injury settlement or award the lawyer’s client receives, in exchange for the medical professional deferring any action to collect a medical debt.