Fighting the injury attorney stereotype

Apr 19, 2022 | By: Christina Goldberg

There’s definitely a stereotype about personal injury attorneys. To that end, I decided a long time ago that I’ll never be as financially abundant as many injury litigation attorneys. I also realized I am A-OK with that.

Some of the stuff I see and hear about makes me cringe, and, frankly, I frequently ask myself “why on EARTH would anybody buy into that sort of advertising?!” Or “I’d be genuinely embarrassed to drive up and walk into an attorney’s office that looked like that.”

As they say, there is a lid for every Tupperware. As an attorney committed to breaking the stigma and attorney stereotype, I’m far from universal.

The exception has become the norm

The troubling part of it is that this classless, arrogant, sleazy impression of injury attorneys is not the exception. Unfortunately, it has turned into the norm.

So I’m not surprised when I have good, hardworking, honest clients walk into my office with genuine concerns and injuries, but guardedly announce “I’m not that kind of person.”

Well, client, nor am I. I help those who NEED help — not those who see opportunity — and I have turned an awful lot of cases away in my career.

Somehow, along the way, we stopped taking accountability for our own actions and started looking for someone else to blame.

We won’t make something out of nothing

The calls we get sometimes are baffling, and our recourse, while conversing with potential clients, is to ask “so, against whom, exactly, do you believe a claim should be made?”

It’s maddening and disenchanting to realize that there will always be some unscrupulous attorney who will try anything, make a case where there isn’t one, and continue perpetuating a sour attitude toward the profession.

Upstanding. That’s what I want to be. And that is what we are. We don’t pretend to know what we don’t.

Additionally, we don’t manufacture a claim that doesn’t exist. We are doing our best to make a name for ourselves as trustworthy, ethical attorneys who always keep our clients’ interests at the forefront — rather than our income.

As long as there is a stereotype, we’ll continue to fight it.

Our business is our clients. But we don’t treat our clients like a business.