Illinois workers’ compensation attorneys love union members. There are a few reasons for that. They include:
- Their wages are usually high which makes the case worth more money.
- Often their injuries are significant, which makes the case worth more money.
- They have a lot of injuries due to the dangerous nature of the job. That means more business and more money for the attorney.
- If you do a good job for them, they will tell their friends at work which means more cases and more money.
If you can not tell, union members are often desirable clients to have and attorneys love cases that they can make money off of. That is just honest talk.
As a result of this, there are a lot of firms that target unions with their marketing efforts. That is not something I have ever really done beyond writing blog posts. Some of these marketing efforts include:
- Fancy dinners
- Tickets to sporting events
- Golf outings
- Vacations
- Raffles where every wins and the prizes are things like big screen TV’s.
- Strip club outings
- Cash
In other words, for some law firms, it is not as much marketing as it is bribery. They take out the union heads and magically those people are telling their members that they need to hire that law firm if they ever get hurt on the job.
Some of these unions are more forceful than others. There are plenty who will only allow access to members through newsletters or letting a lawyer show up at a meeting. But some slimy ones will really pressure workers and I have heard of cases of a union leader bringing an attorney to a hospital and telling the worker they should sign with them. To me it is pretty gross behavior.
The reality is that these marketing efforts work. And some of the law firms who get the cases do great work. But there are also others who do not look at the injured worker as the client, but instead only worry about the relationship with the union leaders.
In one case that contacted us, heavy labor union member (purposely not saying what type of work) badly hurt his leg and shoulder and had multiple surgeries. For a couple of years his TTD benefits went unpaid even though his medical bills were covered. He begged the lawyer to go to trial and they did nothing. The worker complained to the union head and when the lawyer heard about it, they screamed at their client and kind of threatened them.
Eventually a settlement offer was made and the lawyer told the worker to take it and that if he went to trial he could get nothing. We looked at the case and it was clearly a lie that he could get nothing at trial. The offer was over $200,000 and there were no defenses to the accident being work related. In fact, we believe the case is likely worth over double what was offered.
This is somewhat of an extreme example, but more common than you think. This attorney cares about keeping the union business, but not about making the union members happy. It should not be that way.
If this happens to you, the only thing you can do is remember that you are the one who chooses your lawyer and you can choose to get a new one if you started with a bad one. It costs nothing to switch firms and while we always encourage people to work things out if they can, when you have terrible customer service situations like this, switching is usually the best option.
If you would like a free, confidential case review, call us any time at 312-346-5578. We have a state wide network that covers all of Illinois and we will do whatever we can for you.
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