You wrote the defendant’s insurance adjuster detailing the severity of the injuries long before the plaintiff reached maximum medical improvement. After the plaintiff finished treating, you sent a demand package to the insurance adjuster asking the adjuster to make the first offer. Once you received the first offer, you analyzed the defendant’s defenses along with your own arguments, and determined the value of the case. You then called the adjuster to test the waters and see how firmly the adjuster would stand behind his or her first offer, and you may have even elicited a better offer. The next step in negotiating a personal injury settlement is called bracketing.

Bracketing involves making a counter offer that reflects the difference between the defendant’s first offer and the reasonable settlement value that you and your client have decided upon. If the defendant’s first offer is $10,000 below your previously determined reasonable settlement value, your counter offer should be approximately $10,000 above the reasonable settlement value. Adjusters know that attorneys use this technique, but it’s important not to be too obvious about it. For instance, instead of making the counter offer $10,000 above the reasonable settlement value, you may consider choosing some arbitrary number that is close to $10,000, such as $9,879.00. That gives the impression that you have utilized a complicated formula for calculating the value of the case.

Once you have used the bracketing technique, the defendant’s adjuster will likely increase his offer. You should then decrease your demand approximately the same amount as the adjuster’s increased offer. If you continue to do this every time you talk to the adjuster, as long as the defense adjuster continues to increase the offer with each communication, eventually you will reach the reasonable settlement value, and the case will settle.

Although bracketing is a very powerful technique, it is not always easy to accomplish a settlement. There will be times when you and the defense adjuster cannot agree and seem to have reached an impasse. At that point, the insurance adjuster will tell you that the offer is final. Here is a tip for the new practitioner or for the person who is trying to negotiate a settlement on his own: If the adjuster says the offer is final, he is lying. A personal injury settlement offer is never final until the case is settled. When the adjuster says an offer is final, he simply means that you, the attorney or the plaintiff negotiating the settlement, have more work to do. Click here for some techniques you can use to overcome an apparent impasse.

The first step in negotiating a personal injury case is to send a letter to the defendant’s insurance adjuster detailing the plaintiff’s injuries along with medical records supplementing the letter. The second step is to send a demand package/letter once the plaintiff reached maximum medical improvement. The third step is to determine the value of the case. The purpose of this post is to detail the fourth step in negotiating the settlement of a personal injury case, which involves talking to the defense adjuster and making a counter offer. The fourth step requires utilizing a technique called “testing the waters.”

At this point, you have already received the first offer from the adjuster. You and your client have decided upon a reasonable settlement value for the case. Unless the adjuster is offering the policy limits, you should almost never accept the first offer. So, there will always be a difference between the amount of the first offer and the reasonable settlement value. I like to test the adjuster to see how firmly he or she will stand behind the first offer. In appropriate cases where the initial offer is too low, I call the adjuster and explain that the first offer is too low for us even to consider making a counter offer. I then ask the adjuster to increase the first offer to an amount that gives my client some hope that a reasonable pre-suit settlement is possible.

This accomplishes two things. Sometimes it elicits a better offer from the adjuster. This happens more often than I would expect. Even if it doesn’t elicit a better offer with the adjuster, it gives me the opportunity to see how strongly the adjuster feels about the initial offer. If the adjuster thinks her unreasonable first offer is reasonable, it lets me know that I should go ahead and file a lawsuit before making an initial counter offer. There is no need to submit a fruitless offer. If the adjuster indicates she has substantial room to move, I know that it’s safe to make a counter offer without fear of showing my hand too early.

For information on the next step in negotiating a personal injury settlement, click here.

The first step in negotiating a personal injury settlement is to send a letter to the defense adjuster with supporting medical documentation long before the plaintiff finishes his medical treatment. The second step is to send a settlement demand package after the plaintiff exhausts all possible medical solutions, i.e. reaches maximum medical improvement. The purpose of this post is to detail the third step in negotiating a personal injury settlement.

The third step in negotiating a personal injury settlement is to determine the value of the case. It is important to do this after you receive the first offer from the insurance adjuster. When I receive the first offer from the insurance adjuster, I never respond immediately with a counter offer. Instead, I call the adjuster and ask how he or she calculated this first offer. I ask hard questions and get details about how he or she calculated the offer. The answers to my questions give me important information on how I can most effectively negotiate with this adjuster. Adjusters don’t usually try to hide the ball. They let you know their defenses and what they consider to be the weaknesses in the case. It is important to understand those weaknesses in order to properly place a value on the case. For information regarding how to place a value on a personal injury case, click here.

For information regarding the next step in negotiating a personal injury case, click here.