There are several damages that are recoverable in a wrongful death case. The damages generally associated with wrongful death cases include burial costs, lost wages, intangible costs and medical costs.

Burial Costs in a Wrongful Death Case

In a wrongful death case, you can commonly sue for burial costs. The burial costs must be reasonable, not extravagant.

Lost Wages in a Wrongful Death Case

Lost wages include the wages that someone could not earn while ill as well as the wages they would have earned over the lifetime they will no longer live. Lost wages for the support of the family will be based on the typical income of the deceased times the number of years they would have otherwise been expected to live.

Lost wages can also be determined for the caregiver. For example, a family member who spent weeks at the bedside of someone who died can sue for the income they did not earn during the ordeal. A family member who lost time from work providing care for someone at home after they were injured can sue for lost wages due to the care-giving duties.

Intangible Losses in a Wrongful Death Case

Family members can sue for intangible losses related to a wrongful death. Premature death of a loved one often causes pain and suffering as well as loss of companionship. These damages are difficult to place a dollar value on, but personal injury lawyers can help assign a number to this loss and include it in your wrongful death lawsuit.

Medical Costs in a Wrongful Death Case

While suing for wrongful death, it is possible to sue for the medical costs during the last days or weeks of their life. For example, someone may have received incorrect medical treatment and spent several days in the intensive care unit fighting for their live before passing on. If someone was admitted to an emergency room and died there, the family may be able to sue for reimbursement for medical procedures that went awry. As part of the wrongful death suit, the family can sue for reimbursement for these medical costs.

Who can Receive Damages from a Wrongful Death Case?

Damages in a wrongful death case are limited to those most severely harmed by the loss of the individual. Spouses and financial dependents such as minor children can sue for the loss of companionship and financial support of the deceased. Immediate family members such as adult children and parents can sue for wrongful death. This is especially true if there is no spouse of the deceased or if these family members have custody of surviving minor children of the deceased.

Distant relatives such as siblings can sometimes sue for the wrongful death in some jurisdictions, but their case is a lower priority over any wrongful death suit brought by widows and widowers, children and parents of the deceased.

A personal injury lawyer can review your situation and determine if you have a viable claim. A trustee of an estate is able to sue for damages for the wrongful death, on behalf of heirs to the estate. Toronto injury lawyers can be hired by the trustee to file the wrongful death suit with the proceeds of the lawsuit becoming part of the estate.

I read this article today about why people shouldn’t go to law school, and it got me thinking about what makes a good attorney, and, more specifically, what makes a good Seattle bankruptcy lawyer. I thought I’d write this article because if you’re thinking about becoming a bankruptcy attorney or already are one, then it might help to see what I think makes up a good one.

Now, I must admit up front, I am, in fact, not a bankruptcy lawyer, though I am a lawyer. I do know quite a few bankruptcy lawyers though, some better than others, and when I opened my law firm several years ago I thought about focusing on bankruptcy, so I thought about what a good bankruptcy attorney would act like. Here’s what I came up with.

1. The Ability to Manage a Lot of Balls in the Air

In most cases bankruptcy law firms are volume practices. You take on a lot of cases and help a lot of people. That’s just how the economics of the thing works out. And that’s okay. There are good law firms that do a lot of volume. But a lot of volume requires good organization. If you don’t have that, you could have a disaster on your hands.

The good Seattle bankruptcy lawyers I know all have a great set of systems and procedures in place to manage all of the things they have going on with all of their cases. An innate need to stay organized helps a lot in a practice like this.

2. A Good Grasp of Numbers

At the end of the day, a lot of what being a bankruptcy lawyer is is taking a look at a bunch of numbers, moving them around in ways that work, and then presenting that to the trustee and trying to convince him your numbers are where they should be. What makes this important is an understanding of numbers can affect a clients bottom line. Being a good lawyer isn’t just about making money, it’s also about getting great results for clients.

3. A Comfort Level with Marketing

There’s a reason you see bankruptcy lawyers’ faces pasted on buses and billboards all over town – that’s what’s required to get the clients needed to make money. A good bankruptcy lawyer understands that to be a good lawyer there have to be clients coming into the office. And that means a certain level of marketing is going to have to take place.

This comfort level isn’t just reserved to putting your face on things – it also means having an understanding of the different kinds of marketing methods out there and the knowledge needed to choose which marketing methods to pursue and which ones to leave behind. Although I’m not a Seattle bankruptcy lawyer, I am a lawyer who helps normal people. I get calls daily from marketers promising to help me get new clients. Being able to tell who’s full of crap and who isn’t is a great characteristic to have.

What Characteristics do You Think are Helpful?

The great thing about the characteristics I’ve identified above is that they all can be learned. You can work at them a little bit every day to make yourself better. And that’s the way it should be. I don’t think anyone was ever born great at anything. Everyone has to work for what they get. You should get started working today.

We love to hear your comments! Leave them below!

I think we all struggle with being productive. I’m no different. There are days when I’m great and I get a lot of work done, and there are days that are a struggle to get even the first three or four things on my to-do list knocked off.

But recently I’ve gotten better. I’ve figured out how to become a more productive DUI attorney and a more productive person in general. Here’s what I’ve done. Hopefully you can use some of these same techniques to get the results you deserve.

1. This DUI Attorney Became More Productive by Eliminating Distractions

I, like most of you, have a smartphone. I use my phone for business, mostly, but it’g got the capability to do so much more. Facebook, Twitter, Words with Friends, Foursquare, email, sports scores, sports radio, and on and on and on. The possibilities are endless. Actually, let me rephrase, the distractions are endless.

One of the things I’ve done lately is do whatever I can to eliminate as many distractions as possible. Here are just a few things that I’ve done to reach that goal

1. Turned off all notification buttons.

2. Only check email once every 3 hours.

3. Only check Facebook once every 3 hours.

4. No internet browsing except for lunch.

Doing those things has significantly increased my productivity, which is great, since a day in court can eat up a bunch of my time, making every second I can do work as a DUI defense attorney all the more important.

2. I’ve Gotten Help From Fellow DUI Attorneys – Good Peer Pressure

Sometimes all we need to be productive is the right motivation. In my case, the right motivation is pressure from my peers to deliver when promised. Because of that, I’ve started including some of the other attorneys in my firm on my projects. Nothing real serious, just meetings to discuss cases. This forces me to have my stuff together in real time, to answer to real people. Sometimes “soft” deadlines have a way of just getting passed by without much fanfare.

Typically what I’ll do in this situation is just email a coworker and ask them if we can discuss a case or an issue. We’ll put it on the calendar and then I know that by that time I’ve got to have an idea of what I want to talk about or where I want to go with the case. Peer pressure can really be a good thing.

3. Practice Good Habits

When I first started this journey toward increased productivity, I must admit it was really hard. My habits were deeply ingrained. Though I was doing well in my capacity as an Atlanta DUI attorney, I knew I could have been doing so much more. That’s why I started this journey. But it wasn’t all cake and ice cream.

I read somewhere that good habits take about 28 days to really take hold with a person. That means you’ve got to do something for 28 straight days before it truly becomes a habit for you. During those 28 days you’ve got to fight and claw and scratch to get that habit ingrained in your system. For me it was worth it – I know being more productive is good not only for my career as a DUI defense attorney, but for my life in general.

I must admit, too, that while the ride has been bumpy, I love my new, productive self. I’m getting more done, I’ve actually got more free time now than I did before (because I’m just knocking stuff out) and I’ve got a lot less cluttered mind. Don’t wait, get started on your path to productivity today. You’ll be glad you did.

Comments and Questions Welcome

Have some other ideas and techniques that you use to be productive? We want to hear them! Just leave a comment below.

When I started my career as an attorney, I had one goal in mind – to become the best bankruptcy attorney there is. And, I’d like to think I’m on my way to doing that. But I’m not there yet, and I may never be. But I’m going to keep working at it, keep “practicing” every day.

See, that’s why I think people call what we do a “practice.” It’s because there never really is perfection – there’s always that next thing to learn, there’s always that skill to build upon, there’s always that next mountain to climb.

But there are ways to get better. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. I want to talk about 3 of the things I’ve relied upon to become a better bankruptcy attorney.

1. Read Read Read

One of the things I do every day is read. I commit an hour a day to doing it, usually at the end of the day before I go home. Sometimes I read a book on bankruptcy, sometimes I read a book on leadership, sometimes I read a book on trial skills, sometimes I read a book on time management. Whatever I’m reading, though, I make sure it will serve to make me a better lawyer.

When it comes to reading too, one of the things I’ll often do is simply read the bankruptcy code, or a book that discusses some of the more subtle aspects of bankruptcy practice. And I’ll usually read it more than once. By that time it’s become ingrained in my head, and I’m able to either recall it from memory or quickly go to the place the information exists and refresh my memory. The more of that I can do the better.

2. Continuing Legal Education that Matters

There are a lot of attorneys I know that see continuing legal education, or CLE, as a burden, as something that has to be completed with the most pain possible. But not me. I love CLE programs, and in a typical year I’ll do more than double the CLE hours required by the bar association.

When I’m looking at CLE programs, like with reading, I’m always looking for something that will make me better at what I do. Sometimes it’s a bankruptcy law update. Sometimes it’s a course on writing better. Sometimes it’s a course on client management. Sometimes it’s a course on law firm management. Whatever it is, though, it’s always something that can make me better.

3. Reach Out to Other Bankruptcy Attorneys

One of the ways I’ve most honed my skills is by simply hanging out with other bankruptcy lawyers. We’ll do a happy hour once a month or so and just sit around telling stories, talking about our cases, and working through the problems we’re having. If there’s an issue that comes up someone in the group has usually encountered it before, and if they haven’t most have a suggestion for what to do (lawyers are never short on advice to give – it’s in our nature).

There’s also an element to some of their expertise just rubbing off on you. The confidence you gain by hanging out with your peers and seeing first hand that you have what it takes to be successful is empowering in and of itself.

You may never become the best at what you do. And if you do become the best, you may never realize it. But you can always get better. You can always work to reach that next level. Hopefully these three things I’ve just talked about help you reach all of your goals.

Bankruptcy and wage garnishments are two frightening concepts to many of those in debt. Neither bankruptcy nor wage garnishments should affect your ability to support your family and meet your legal obligations. Hawaii does not allow more than your after-tax pay. Hawaii lets you keep the first $100 you earn, half the income from $100 to $200 and the income after the first $200. Hawaii laws on wage garnishment also refer to federal garnishment rules where the maximum wage garnishment is 250f someone’s disposable income or 30 times the minimum hourly wage.

Federal law grants allowable deductions from their paycheck such as taxes, union dues, child support and alimony. Up to half the amount left over after these deductions can be garnished and sent to creditors under federal law. Hawaii balances its laws with federal law by stating that the debtor is allowed to use either Hawaiian or federal rules depending on which garnishment rules let them keep more. Consult with a Honolulu bankruptcy attorney to determine which set of garnishment laws are better to use in your case.

Do not agree to pay obligations like child support or alimony out of the money left after garnishment. Let a legal professional set up these payments before garnishments are taken out of your pay check. A bankruptcy attorney can often negotiate a payment plan with the creditor before they resort to garnishment. This avoids the hassle of paying your employer up to $10 a month for the hassle of collecting garnishments from your wages. However, you should always get legal representation if you were fired because of your wage garnishments, since it is a federal crime to fire someone simply because of the book keeping required. Always seek legal advice if you are being asked to affirm responsibility for debts held jointly with current spouses, ex-spouses or adult children, since this can make you wholly liable for debts that they do not pay. Talk to an attorney before you reaffirm any debts whether you are considering bankruptcy or are in bankruptcy.

Filing for Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy does stop garnishments while the case is being reviewed. Filing for bankruptcy will not always end wage garnishment for good. However, entering a payment plan under Chapter 13 can alter your wage garnishments and set up a payment plan you can meet. Filing for liquidation bankruptcy will eliminate your debts because your non-exempt property is sold to pay those obligations. However, these garnishments will stop only if the bankruptcy attorney includes those debts in your debt liquidation.

After Chapter 13 bankruptcy is over, your wages should no longer be garnished to pay your debts because the debts are discharged at the end of the bankruptcy. After Chapter 7 bankruptcy, there should be no more wage garnishments unless the garnishments are to pay for debts that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy such as child support debt, tax debt and federally backed student loans. If an unscrupulous collector starts garnishing your wages for debts discharged under bankruptcy, talk to a bankruptcy attorney to get your money back.

The point of this site is to tell you what it’s like to be a lawyer. To do that, I often talk about the business of being a lawyer, as opposed to what life is like as a lawyer in the trenches, doing legal work. I can and will add more of that stuff as we go on, but, I’ve got to be honest with you, for the most part that stuff is boring. It certainly takes a lot of skill, but there’s not that much about it that’s exciting. This stuff, however, at least for me, is exciting.

Whether you are on your own or part of a law firm, you’re going to have to decide how much your services are worth. Deciding that is the hard part, and you’ve really got three options. First, you can be the lowest. Second, you can be in the middle. Or third, you can be the highest. This article is going to be about why you should not be the lowest. If you want, we can talk about why you might want to be in the middle or the high end in the future.

1. The Cheapest DUI Attorney in Town Can’t Properly Service Their Clients

There are two ways you can view your DUI practice. You can be the high volume DUI attorney or you can be the maximum effectiveness DUI attorney. Sure, there is some in between, but at the end of the day you’re going to skew one way or the other. What being the cheapest DUI lawyer in town forces you to do is become the high volume lawyer. That means you have more clients, more cases, and less time to work on each case. It is impossible, in a situation like that, not to dilute your work product.

Let me show you with an example. I know two Atlanta DUI lawyers. One is a high volume guy, one is a low volume guy (he charges more for his cases). The high volume guy is constantly running around from court to court, case to case, flying by the seat of his pants. The low volume guy has court a couple of times a week. He is always on top of his cases. His clients feel like he knows exactly what he’s doing and that he’s the best Atlanta DUI lawyer around. And, here’s the thing the guys that are higher priced, don’t want you to know – they make more money than the volume attorneys.

2. Psychologically Higher Priced Means Better Service

What is better, a purse from Target or a purse from Coach? Most people would probably say the purse from Coach. But what makes it better? And, on top of that what makes it 1000% better (the difference in price)? At the end of the day, it’s the feeling that people get when they have a coach purse. When you price your services like Target, people think you’re giving them a Target like product.

So what does that mean if you’re a DUI lawyer? Simple. It means the higher you price your services, the better people think you are. And, conversely, the lower you price your services, the worse people think you are. And, in this business, perception is reality (in the client’s mind). Think about it like this – you come into my office, I tell you I’m the best Atlanta DUI lawyer there is. And then I ask for a fee that is the lowest of all the DUI lawyers they’ve talked to. What does that tell the potential client? It tells them you aren’t as good as you say you are.

3. Lower Prices Mean Lower Performance for You Too

We all want to win our cases, sure. But once you’re out there practicing you’ll find thoughts creeping into the back of your mind about the service you are providing, particularly when the going gets tough (and at some point it will). When you charge a premium fee you are agreeing to providing a premium service. When you don’t, you aren’t as committed to doing what maybe should be done in a case, because in reality you probably haven’t been paid to do it.

At the end of the day, take my advice, don’t be the cheapest DUI lawyer in town. When you do that, nobody wins.

This site is all about what it’s like to be a lawyer. Well, there’s more to being a lawyer than just lawyering. You’ve got to get clients. That’s why so many of these posts are about how to get clients. The lawyering stuff is pretty easy – but you can’t do anything if you don’t have someone to represent. The newsletter, we’re going to discuss today, is a great way to get some clients.

Newsletters are great for several reasons, but the main reason is it’s a way to connect with people that isn’t internet driven. With so much going on with technology today, sometimes the best way to get someone’s attention is offline. A newsletter is a great way to do that.

To give you an idea, I’ve been doing a monthly newsletter for about a year now. Each month I send out hundreds of newsletters to my network reminding them that if they ever need an Atlanta personal injury lawyer that I am the one they should be calling. Here’s how I do it.

1. Put Together Your Mailing List

Obviously you can’t mail anything out if you don’t have anyone to mail anything too. Step one is putting together a list. When I first started, my list was mostly friends and family. I put some colleagues in there and any current and former clients I had, and that was it. Over time I added to it whenever I could, and it’s just gone on from there. Even if your list is ten people, that’s a great start. Don’t worry, it will get bigger over time.

2. Include Great Content

The great thing about a newsletter is it can be personal. I always include information about what’s going on at the firm. New hires, new additions to family’s, and any other big news always make it in. The key for a great newsletter is to include enough information that people remember that we’re great Atlanta personal injury lawyers, but enough personal information that we make a real connection with people. Talk about what’s going on that month in your city and relate it back to your practice. Talk about things they must know and do if they are ever involved in something within your area of expertise. Talk about things that interest you.

Oh, and we always include a “partner of the month.” This is someone in our network that is in some kind of business that we want to promote. A lot of the time I include vendors I use or other services I use – sometimes I will ask former clients if they want me to profile them. It’s a great way to pay them back for choosing us, and it helps to build some goodwill with that person and their entire network.

3. Delivery is Key Too

I alluded to this earlier, but you can’t do an electronic newsletter (or at least only an electronic newsletter). It just doesn’t have the same pop that a written newsletter does. And, you’ve got to hand address every single envelope you send out. No running them through the printer (you don’t have to do it personally, but they should be hand written). That’s just another personal touch that says “we care about you enough to write this out.” It’s something people remember, believe it or not. And, it gets people to open them up.

When I started out, I had the goal of becoming known as the best personal injury lawyer out there, and helping client after client is the only way to do that. And a newsletter is a great way to get there.

One of the things you’re going to have to do if you’re a lawyer, whether a DWI lawyer or any other lawyer, is get clients. and one of the great ways to do that is with your website. The only thing is, for most of us lawyers, out websites suck. They are old, they are boring, and they are ineffective. And for most, they’ll just keep on going that way.

But not for you. Not for me. We’re going to rise above the mediocrity. And we’re going to do it by implementing these three ideas.

1. Put Yourself on Camera

When I talked to some people that were in the know in marketing, the one thing they said over and over again was that video was the most effective ways of reaching out and making a real connection with your potential clients. Of course I didn’t listen to them, because video makes me uncomfortable (have you ever heard your own voice on video? It never sounds like you think it should). But over time I came around, and now when people are looking for a Houston DWI lawyer they turn to me – they know I’ll do my best for them.

2. Look at What Everyone Else is Doing, and Do the Opposite

It’s really pretty tough to be original. Originality requires putting yourself out there, and putting yourself out there could result in failure. And people generally don’t like failure. But if you want your website to be great, you’re going to have to do that. You are going to have to look at what everyone else is doing, and do exactly the opposite.

For example, I’ve been looking at the Houston DWI lawyer websites around and I see several things over and over. I see cop cars, I see pictures of Houston, I see worried faces, and I see the words “aggressive, dedicated, and experienced.” And seeing that tells me exactly what I don’t want to have on my site.

In any business where you are promoting value, the key to success is differentiating yourself from the competition. You’ve got to have something they want, something the other guy can’t offer, that people are willing to pay for. You can’t have something for everyone, but you can have something for your ideal client, and you simply need to find out how to do that and then execute on your site.

3. Write a Book

Like I said earlier, everyone and their brother promotes their experience. But why talk about experience when you can show it through an ebook. If you’ve got the experience you say you do, then you should know at least ten questions that everyone wants to ask a Houston DWI attorney when they sit down with them for the first time. So, write the book. Show people that you know what they are thinking, sometimes even before they are thinking it. Your experience will show instead of be explained.

Writing a book also shows people that you care about them before you even get to know them. It’s a great way to show them what you and your firm are all about. One of the questions could obviously be what to look for in a good DWI attorney or what makes you different from everyone else. There are a million opportunities to give a mini sales pitch before the potential client even picks up the phone.

Revamping your website doesn’t have to be difficult, but you do have to be committed to it. Know it’s okay to look a little different. Know it’s okay to put yourself out there to be judged. Know that the future success of your law firm depends on it.