A key aspect of the attorney-client contract in a personal injury case is that you (the client) are always entitled to fire your lawyer. That doesn't mean it's always a good idea, however. It's important to weigh a number of factors when deciding whether the time has really come to move on, including what will happen to your chances of success in your personal injury case if you do decide to fire your lawyer.

Is It Time to Fire Your Lawyer?

There are almost as many reasons to fire your personal injury lawyer as there are types of personal injury claims. Some of these reasons include:

• Lack of communication—the lawyer doesn’t return your phone calls, letters, or emails. This is a common client complaint, but if it becomes a chronic problem, your case could suffer.
• Nothing seems to be happening in your case, and the lawyer does not have an adequate and reasonable explanation for the lack of progress.
• You and your lawyer simply do not get along.
• Your lawyer and you seem to be on a different wavelength—for example, you might insist on going to trial, and your lawyer insists on settling the case, or vice versa. (Learn why most personal injury cases settle.)
• Your lawyer seems incompetent, or seriously out of his/her league.
• Your lawyer appears to be acting unethically.
• Your lawyer has missed deadlines.
• Your lawyer won’t let you look at your file or seems to be keeping things from you.
• Your lawyer will not help you with responding to discovery—i.e., your lawyer won’t help you answer the defense attorney’s written questions (interrogatories) or won’t help you prepare for your personal injury deposition (or his/her "help" was seriously lacking).

If you find yourself in any of these situations, you may want to meet with your lawyer to talk it out before making a final decision, or you could just say that you've made up your mind and you’re going to move on. After all, a personal injury lawyer should make a positive impact on your case, not serve as a liability. (There's an in-between option too: getting a second opinion about your personal injury case.)

Keep in mind that it is your case, not the lawyer’s, and you have the absolute right to fire your lawyer at any time, except possibly right before or during trial. Once a trial date has been set, many judges will not let a client fire a lawyer, if doing so will cause a delay in the trial date. So, once a trial date has been set, you will probably not be able to fire your lawyer unless the new lawyer can stick to the trial schedule with no extensions. (Learn more about the trial date in a personal injury lawsuit.)

What Will Happen to Your Case?

First of all, if you do fire your lawyer, it's important to be aware that he or she is still entitled to a fee for the time put in on the case. However, this fee will rarely, if ever, come out of your pocket. In almost every state, the total legal fees for your case—based on your contingency fee agreement with the first lawyer—will be split between all lawyers that end up representing you.

Most personal injury lawyers will treat this situation—where they come on board mid-case—as a referral, and will give the fired lawyer one-third of the total legal fee. But, if the new lawyer doesn’t want to give the first lawyer one-third of any settlement or court award, or, if the first lawyer won’t accept only one-third, then the two lawyers will have to fight it out after your case is settled or goes to trial. Although you might get called as a witness in the fight between the two lawyers, the fight is just between them. It will rarely if ever affect the amount of money that you get from the case.

Learn more about how to tell whether your personal injury lawyer is doing a bad job.