How to Hire a Premises Liability Attorney
1. Confirm focused premises‑liability experience and venue‑specific practice
Ask whether premises liability is a core practice area and for concrete examples of similar cases they’ve handled (slip-and-fall in retail, trip-and-fall on municipal sidewalks, inadequate-security assaults, pool/drowning incidents, or negligent-maintenance in apartment complexes). Request case captions or redacted outcome summaries showing settlements, defense verdicts, or successful claims in the courts where your case would be filed. Make sure they know local law specifics that matter, comparative fault rules, statutory immunities for public entities, notice standards for constructive vs. actual knowledge, premises‑maintenance codes, municipal notice-of-claim requirements, and short filing deadlines in particular jurisdictions, because procedural missteps or incorrect notice can doom a claim regardless of merit.
2. Verify immediate investigative steps, evidence‑preservation skill, and expert relationships
Premises cases hinge on the scene and timely evidence. Ask what the attorney will do in the first 48–72 hours: secure photographs and measurements of the hazard, obtain incident and maintenance logs, gather CCTV/doorbell footage and preserve it with preservation letters, identify and take early witness statements, and request medical records releases. Confirm they routinely coordinate with relevant experts, accident reconstructionists, medical specialists for causation and prognosis, industrial-safety consultants, building-code or ADA accessibility experts, and landscapers/engineers for outdoor hazards, and for examples where expert reports turned a borderline case into a win. Ensure they know how to subpoena maintenance contracts, vendor work orders, inspection reports, and employee training logs, and can subpoena or litigate preservation when defendants try to delete video or alter the scene.
3. Require a clear, phased engagement with damages strategy, fee terms, and settlement/trial decision points
Get a written engagement letter that sets scope (investigation, demand, litigation, trial), identifies who will manage the case, and provides a phased timeline with milestone deliverables (preservation completed, demand letter sent, discovery produced, mediation scheduled). Clarify fee structure, typical contingency percentage with exact tiers for pre‑suit settlement vs. post‑filing recovery, or a hybrid, and which costs are advanced (expert fees, medical‑record retrieval, deposition and transcript costs). Insist on a damages-collection plan explaining how they will document economic damages (medical bills, lost wages), non‑economic damages (pain and suffering, disability, disfigurement), and future care needs (life‑care plans, vocational experts). Finally, require objective settlement benchmarks and client approval checkpoints so you know when they will recommend settlement versus continuing to trial, and ask for an enforcement plan for collections or structured settlements if a defendant’s insurer or corporate entity resists prompt payment.
