What are “costs of litigation” and why are they so high?

Costs are what your lawyer pays on your case to get it filed and to court.  A personal injury case usually has costs associated with obtaining the police report, medical records and bills, possibly depositions and exhibits. A medical malpractice case is more complicated and will result in larger costs due to the amount of medical records, expensive experts, depositions and exhibits. We try to keep costs down but they are often beyond our control. Medical providers charge for obtaining your records and bills. This week we received a bill from a provider for a one page record and an affidavit. They charged us $27.33 to copy one page, $5 for electronic transaction fee and $15 for the affidavit (which we provided). This totaled $47.84! The average case has at least four providers and many of those providers will have additional pages. The cost of medical records quickly adds up. We attempt to keep these down by ordering digital copies from some providers but, as you can see above, sometimes they charge even though they provide them through electronic services. Another example of high cost are depositions. We received a $700 bill this week from a court reporting agency. Two depositions totaling 329 pages cost $715.05. Now, consider a medical malpractice case where there are dozens of depositions of witnesses. We want to keep costs down for our clients. We want you to get as much from the settlement as possible. And, remember, we don’t get our money back if we lose!  We invest in our cases. We currently have roughly $57,000 invested in just one of our medical malpractice cases. Our team truly works for our clients to get them the most out of settlement. This is only one small piece of a much larger picture. If you are looking for a team that will always look out for your best interest, give the Law Office of Keith Short a call at 618-254-0055 or 618-655-9499