Video Transcript
In this video we are going to be reviewing Kimberly Fitzpatrick of Harris Cook, LLP.
We will be going over the six tips in the how to find a local car accident lawyer article.
These tips include:
- specializing in personal injury law
- high settlements and verdicts
- active in trial lawyer groups and associations
- credible reviews and testimonials
- willing to work off a contingency fee
- active, engaging, and helpful online
Let’s get started on Kimberly Fitzpatrick.
If you google her name you’ll see that you can find their website and on the home page you can see that they focus on:
- family law
- business law
- criminal defense
- wills and estates
- personal injury
- administrative law
So right off the bat you can see that the firm doesn’t specializing in personal injury.
1. Specializing in Personal Injury Law
Let’s go and see if we can find her profile and see if she just focuses on personal injury. Within this first paragraph, you can see that she works on several different things including:
- Business Law
- Personal Injury
- Civil Litigation
- Probate and Estate Law
- Real Estate and Insurance Litigation
So that pretty much nicks our specializes in personal injury law.
2. High Settlements and Verdicts
Let’s go on to the second tip and see if we can find anything about settlements and verdicts.
Sometimes on firm websites they’ll include a link to settlement maybe under testimonials or something.
I don’t see anything about settlements and verdicts.
It would be nice to see something about personal injury verdicts, but I don’t see anything on their website. If you do reach out to Kimberly that might be something that you ask.
“What are her settlements and verdicts when it comes to personal injury?”
3. Active in Trial Lawyer Groups and Associations
The third tip we can look for is active in trial lawyer groups and associations.
You can see at the bottom of their website that they are:
- board certified
- BBB accredited
- Highly rated on Avvo
- Peer Review rated on Martindale-Hubbell
Those are the only four I see and three of them are lawyer related. I don’t really see any other groups or associations.
Her profile page shows some honors, awards, members and associations:
- Arlington Bar Association, Secretary/Treasurer, 2013 – Present
- State Bar of Texas Unauthorised Practice of Law, Committee Member, 2014 – Present
- Tarrant County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, Member, 2012 – Present
You can see the association for criminal defense lawyer.
Again, not really specializing in personal injury. This might be something to take into consideration.
4. Reviews & Testimonials
The next tip is reviews and testimonials.
If you go into the testimonial section of the website you can see a testimonials for:
- divorce client
- divorce client
- custody client
- grandparents rights
- divorce
So you don’t really see anything on personal injury which is kind of a bummer.
I just say it’s a kind of a bummer if you’re looking for a personal injury lawyer.
If you’re looking for a divorce lawyer then Kimberly might be your choice, but if I’m looking for a personal injury lawyer and I don’t really see any testimonials on her website that might be something to take into consideration.
When you google her name you can see that there’s other reviews.
You can read through them and see if there’s any personal injury related, but a lot of them don’t go and detail about the case.
She does have some good reviews, you can see it’s a five-star review which is pretty hard to get as a lawyer. People only leave reviews when they want to leave negative reviews so the fact that she is all five-star reviews is pretty good.
We can also go to their Facebook page.
There’s sections on Facebook to leave reviews sometimes, but I don’t really see any reviews right off the bat. Again, if you call Kimberly you may just want to ask her about her previous personal injury cases and see if there’s any reviews or clients that you can call and talk to.
5. Work off of a Contingency Fee
Our fifth tips that we like to recommend is to see if they work off of a contingency fee.
As you know and as you read through the car accidents article, personal injury cases can get pretty expensive with:
- medical bills
- hiring experts to look over the wreck
- court fees
- firm staff time
So we really want a lawyer that will work off of a contingency fee so we don’t have to pay them as we go.
I see that you can set up an appointment, but doesn’t really say anything about a contingency fee. The website just says contact for a case evaluation. If it’s hard to find that they’re willing to work from a contingency fee, then more than likely that is not an option.
If you call Kimberly about your personal injury case you may want to ask her if she’s willing to work off of a contingency fee.
6. Active, Engaging, and Helpful Online
The last tip we talk about is active, engaging, and helpful online.
You can see they do have videos on their website. Looks like three videos, none of them on personal injury. That doesn’t really help us in this case.
Let’s see what the blog is all about.
The last post blog was on August 21st, so at the time of this video it’s about a month old. Nothing really related to personal injury.
There is an auto accident section. May 11th was the last time they talked about anything related to car accidents. They do have some information, but since they don’t specialize just in personal injury that’s probably why they don’t have up-to-date personal injury related things on their website.
Let’s check out their other online profiles.
You can see that on their Facebook page they are active and it looks like pretty helpful content posts. Looks like a nice law firm that’s willing to help in all kinds of general law.
They do have some other social profiles that we can go to:
- Google+
Google+ looks like they just cross post from their Facebook page which a lot of people do since it’s hard to manage several different social profiles.
Looking at their Twitter handle, I see a post about brain injuries on September 8th.
Based on the posts we can see that Harris Cook is a full-service law firm. They don’t really specializing in personal injury.
They do offer personal injury services. It’s just not something that they specialize in.
