Choosing · 11 min read
How to actually choose an injury lawyer
Most people choose a lawyer the way they choose a plumber: search, scan, call the first credible-looking result. The difference is that a plumber’s work is visible within an hour, and you will be with this firm for two to five years while your finances, your health and your ability to work hang on their judgment.
Reviewed May 2026What search results actually measure
It is worth understanding the mechanics rather than being cynical about them. The listings at the top of a search page marked as sponsored are an auction: the firm that bid the most for that keyword in your area appears first. Personal injury is one of the most expensive advertising categories in existence, which means the top of the page reliably identifies who has the largest marketing budget. That is a real fact about a firm. It is simply not a fact about how they will handle your file.
Below the ads, organic rankings reward technical site quality, backlinks and content volume — signals produced by marketing teams, not by case outcomes. Review counts are gameable and heavily post-hoc: clients who settle are asked to review, clients whose claims were declined or delayed are not. "Award" badges are frequently paid placements in directories that sell them. None of this makes those firms bad. It makes the ranking uninformative.
The question is not whether a firm is visible. It is whether the specific lawyer who will hold your file has done your specific kind of case, in your province, recently, and has room for it now.
The fourteen questions
Ask these in the free consultation. Write down the answers. Any firm worth retaining will answer all of them directly, and the ones that get uncomfortable have told you something useful.
- Who will actually handle my file day to day — you, another lawyer, or a clerk? What is their name?
- How many files does that person carry at once?
- How many cases like mine have you personally handled in the last three years?
- How many of your files went to trial or hearing in the last three years?
- What is your contingency percentage, and does it increase at any stage of the file?
- Is the percentage calculated before or after disbursements are deducted?
- Who pays disbursements as the file runs, and do you charge interest on money you advance?
- What happens to disbursements if we lose? Do I owe them?
- Do you carry adverse-costs insurance, and who pays the premium?
- What happens if I want to change lawyers partway through — what do I owe you?
- What is your policy on returning calls, and by when?
- What are the three biggest weaknesses in my case?
- What is your honest assessment of the range this could resolve in, and what would move it?
- Have you ever been disciplined by the law society?
Question twelve. A lawyer who cannot immediately name three weaknesses in your case either has not thought about it or is selling to you. Every real file has weaknesses, and the good ones are already planning around yours before you have signed anything.
Read the retainer, all of it
The contingency agreement is the most important document you will sign in this process, and most people sign it in a state of pain and relief without reading past the percentage. Take it home. Read it somewhere quiet. Any firm that discourages you from doing that has answered a question you did not have to ask.
- The percentage, and whether it escalates once an action is commenced or a trial date is set. Escalation is common and legitimate — it should just be explained rather than discovered.
- Whether the fee is calculated on the gross settlement or after disbursements come off. This can be a five-figure difference on the same headline percentage.
- How disbursements are handled if the claim fails.
- Whether interest accrues on advanced disbursements, and at what rate.
- What is owed if you terminate the retainer, and whether the firm can assert a lien on your file.
- Whether costs recovered from the other side belong to you or the firm.
Signals worth taking seriously
- Pressure to sign today. There is no legitimate reason for it, other than a limitation period genuinely expiring — and a firm facing that will tell you exactly why.
- Any prediction of a specific number before they have seen a single medical record.
- You cannot get a straight answer about who is doing the work.
- They accepted your file in eight minutes without asking about pre-existing conditions, treatment gaps, or prior claims.
- The consultation was entirely with a non-lawyer intake staffer and you never spoke to a lawyer at all.
And the signals that are genuinely good
- They told you something you did not want to hear in the first conversation.
- They declined part of your claim and explained why.
- They asked about your treatment gaps, your prior injuries and your last claim before you volunteered any of it.
- They were specific about process and timelines and refused to be specific about outcome.
- They encouraged you to speak to someone else before deciding.