A car accident, a bicycle accident or an accident at work. An accident with personal injury happens every day. In most countries there are personal injury lawyers, who assist personal injury victims in recovering injuries after an accident. In the Netherlands this is different. In the Netherlands, personal injury has become a market, especially for entrepreneurs. There is a lot of money to be made in the Netherlands with personal injury claims. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of the quality of legal assistance to victims of an accident or dog bite.
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Personal Injury Lawyers vs Personal Injury Agencies
In the Netherlands, 2 groups of legal aid providers can be distinguished when it comes to personal injury claims. On the one hand, there are personal injury lawyers. This group is involved in personal injury law because they are lawyers and have studied for this.
On the other hand, there are personal injury agencies. No personal injury lawyers work here and often no personal injury experts either. The owners are entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs look at industries in which money can be made. A personal injury agency deals with personal injury claims because they can earn money with it.
So both a personal injury lawyer and a personal injury agency deal with personal injury claims, for example damage because someone has had whiplash symptoms (Dutch: whiplash symptomen) as a result of a collision.
Difference between personal injury lawyer and personal injury agency
Although both a personal injury lawyer and a personal injury agency help clients with whiplash symptoms, there is a big difference in the quality of the legal assistance.
Personal injury lawyers have completed a law course of at least 4 years before they were allowed to practice the profession of lawyer. A lawyer can then specialize in personal injury claims. This is different with a personal injury agency. Personal injury specialist is not a protected profession in the Netherlands. Any smart entrepreneur can therefore start a personal injury agency. It goes without saying that this is at the expense of the quality of legal aid. A personal injury victim often receives too low compensation for whiplash symptoms than he or she should receive. For example, a lower amount of compensation (Dutch: smartengeld).
Are the personal injury lawyers disappearing in the Netherlands?
Entrepreneurs know exactly how to approach and attract clients. The same applies to personal injury. Entrepreneurs in the field of personal injury have large budgets for an expensive website and a great and successful Google campaign. This is used to advertise on the internet for free personal injury claims in the Netherlands.
Entrepreneurs are so fond of personal injury claims because the costs they incur for this are eligible for compensation under the law. The counterparty pays these legal costs and this is usually an insurer.
Claiming personal injury is therefore very lucrative in the Netherlands and entrepreneurs know this. Most lawyers are not entrepreneurs and as a result are losing more and more marketshare in the Netherlands in the field of personal injury. This profession will disappear!
Measures against entrepreneurs in personal injury
Measures are not taken against entrepreneurs, despite the fact that the current way of doing this results in poor legal aid. Insurers also benefit from this, because they have to pay less compensation. The Bar Association in the Netherlands does not pay attention to the problem and the politicians are not doing anything either. Unfortunately, it looks like the situation will remain unchanged.
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