How to find an injury lawyer without going through anyone
We are not paid to send you anywhere, so here is how to do it yourself. These are the routes that cost nothing and answer to someone.
Bar association referral services
Both states' bar associations run lawyer referral services, and many county bars run their own. They are non-profit, they are overseen by the bar, and they typically charge a small or no consultation fee. Because they are bar-operated they sit in the category both states' ethics rules expressly permit, which is not true of every website that offers to match you with someone.
- New Jersey: the New Jersey State Bar Association operates a referral service, and county bar associations including Essex, Bergen, Middlesex and Camden run their own.
- Pennsylvania: the Pennsylvania Bar Association operates a referral service, as do the Philadelphia and Allegheny County bar associations among others.
Legal aid, if cost is the obstacle
Legal Services of New Jersey and its regional programmes, and Pennsylvania's legal aid network, provide free civil legal help to people who qualify financially. Injury claims are usually taken on contingency by private firms, so cost is less often the barrier here than in other areas of law, but if you are dealing with a related housing, benefits or employment problem alongside the injury, these organisations matter.
What contingency fee actually means
Most injury lawyers work on contingency: no fee unless you recover, and a percentage if you do. Two things people routinely misunderstand.
Costs are not the same as the fee. Filing fees, expert reports, medical records and depositions are case costs. Ask whether they come out of the recovery before or after the percentage is calculated, because the difference is real money.
New Jersey caps contingency fees in tort cases by court rule, on a sliding scale. Pennsylvania does not cap them generally, so the percentage is a matter of the agreement you sign. Read it, and ask what happens if you change lawyers partway.
Questions worth asking in a first consultation
- Who will actually handle my file day to day, and will I meet them?
- How many matters like this have you taken to trial, not just settled?
- What do you think the weaknesses are? A lawyer with no answer has not read it.
- How are case costs handled if we lose?
- What is the deadline in my matter, and what has to happen before it?
- How often will I hear from you, and by what means?
Consultations are generally free and generally privileged
Most injury firms do not charge for a first consultation, and what you tell an attorney in one is generally protected even if you never retain them. That is a meaningful difference from typing the same thing into a website, including this one.
A word on the other kind of website
Plenty of sites offer to match injured people with a lawyer. Some are run by bar associations and are exactly what they appear to be. Others are lead generators paid by the firm that receives you, sometimes per lead and sometimes more. That is not automatically wrong, and in some states it is lawful and disclosed. But you are entitled to know which one you are using.
The question to ask any such site is simple: does the firm you are sending me to pay you, and how much does that payment depend on what I do next? Ours is easy to answer. Nobody pays us anything, and we are not sending you anywhere.