If you decide to fire your old lawyer and hire a new one, you should be aware that your current lawyer is not obligated to release your file to you until you have paid him back the costs he has advanced on your case. This may be a substantial sum of money.
You may also have difficulty hiring a new lawyer. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that your old lawyer will have a right to be paid a portion of the fees from the settlement of your case for the work they did on your case, which means that your new lawyer will have to share fees with the old lawyer, and this is often a source of contention between the lawyers. Another reason is that the new lawyer will be stuck with some of the strategy decisions that the old lawyer made, and cannot control the outcome of the case in the same way that he would if he were handling the case from the start.
Our firm very seldom accepts personal injury cases after another lawyer has been working on it, and almost never after suit has been filed. As experienced Chicago personal injury lawyers, we know the problems that come up from taking over a case from another lawyer and try very hard to avoid them.
From your perspective, the best way to avoid these problems is to make a good decision about who to hire to represent you in the first place. Our firm publishes a guide called “8 Mistakes You Can Make in Hiring a Lawyer for Your Accident Case”. If you have not made a decision about who to hire as your personal injury lawyer, call our office for a copy.