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.