Are Personal Injury Lawyers the same as Medical Malpractice Lawyers?

Hey, Brian, what's the difference between a personal injury attorney and a medical malpractice attorney. The difference between a personal injury attorney and a medical malpractice attorney? Here's what I would tell you. Personal injury lawyers are lawyers who handle any kind of case where one person's carelessness causes injury to another person. That includes things like car accidents or slip and fall cases or even sometimes medical malpractice cases. Medical malpractice is really a subset of personal injury. It's a much more narrow subject field. So medical malpractice lawyers who handle cases only against doctors, nurses, hospitals and other medical facilities and medical personnel in terms of the cases themselves, both types of cases, personal injury and the subset of medical malpractice cases, they seek civil justice in civil court for compensatory damages. But medical malpractice cases are much more complicated than typical personal injury cases, and that's because you have to have a much greater grasp of difficult medical concepts. You have to know medical terminology. You have to be familiar with medical records. You have to be able to conduct medical literature research. And you have to be familiar with and able to converse with medical expert witnesses in all kinds of fields, from cardiology to pathology, from neurology to anesthesiology. So you really have to develop a base of knowledge in medical fields and you have to have an aptitude for understanding the medical issues. Medical malpractice cases are also more difficult because the more expensive. You have to retain experts in all kinds of fields sometimes. We can spend 50, 80, 100, 150, and in brain injured baby cases, sometimes in excess of $200,000, on expert witnesses alone. Another major difference between medical malpractice and other types of personal injury cases is damage caps. So there are specific damage caps that apply only to medical malpractice cases. In particular, there is a damage cap on noneconomic damages, things like pain and suffering for even the most catastrophic injury cases when the injury is medical malpractice. Another very big difference is in personal injury cases that aren't medical malpractice: slip and fall car accidents and things like that. Generally speaking, you have two years from the date of the injury to file a lawsuit, whereas in medical malpractice cases, unless it's a wrongful death case, you only have one year to file suit. So, while medical malpractice really is a type of personal injury, it is a very specific type of personal injury lawsuit. And if the question is, gee, I have a medical malpractice case, should I hire a personal injury lawyer, someone who handles car accidents and slip and falls in addition to medical malpractice? Or should I hire a lawyer who spends all of their time on medical malpractice? For me, that's a no brainer. You should really try to find somebody who focuses their entire practice on medical injuries. That's my opinion.