What does the claimant feel that the case is worth? The amount quoted in the demand letter should be greater than the figure that represents the case’s worth. Still, it needs to qualify as a reasonable request, as per Personal Injury Lawyer in London.
What amount of money would satisfy the claimant?
That number should not be in the demand letter. It should equal the lowest acceptable bid from the opposing party. Once it had been determined, it would need to stay in the claimant’s mind.
Why does it go unmentioned in the communications from the lawyer-client team? That is the nature of the bargaining process. No party to the bargaining process should ever know how much money the other side might accept, or be willing to bid. The insurance adjuster does not reveal how much money the insurance company might be willing to pay to any given claimant.
A second essential aspect of the negotiation process
The parties that plan to bargain make a point of starting out with two very different numbers. One is the amount of money desired, and the other is the amount of money offered. Those 2 amounts need to be very different, so that there is room to maneuver, as the negotiations take place.
Yet, the person that needs to demand a desired compensation does not know what the insurance company might bid. That is why claimants should not reveal the lowest acceptable offer. In fact, each of them should feel free to change that figure, after learning the size of the insurance company’s initial bid.
How should claimants go about demanding a certain amount of money?
Once the client-lawyer team has chosen an amount that seems fair and reasonable, it must present that amount in the final paragraph of the demand letter. That same paragraph ought to make mention of the facts that were stated earlier. Those facts should have included details on the client’s injuries and support for the allegation that the other party caused the accident.
Smart claimants often supplement their written statements with some photographs and copied documents. The photographs might call the adjuster’s attention to the degree to which the claimant’s property (perhaps a vehicle) was damaged.
Still, such a photograph should not suggest injuries that were more severe than the ones reported. That might cause the insurance company to question the skills of the treating physician.
If an insurance company were to harbor any doubts about such skills, then it would be apt to reduce the size of its settlement offer. That would create a greater spread between the amount that was demanded and the amount that had been offered. Hence, it would take longer for the 2 sides to finally agree on a figure.