A law firm’s car accident settlement calculator helps attorneys determine how much monetary compensation a plaintiff should ask for in a car accident case. The auto insurance injury settlement calculator in personal injury practice management software should enable the legal team to manage all the demands and offers in one place for single and even multiple plaintiffs in a car accident case. What’s more, the best car accident settlement calculators make it easy for you to track offers, payment requests, and expenses.
How do you calculate car accident settlements?
Calculating an automobile accident settlement takes into account dozens of variables. First there are the facts of the accident itself: where and when it occurred, the vehicles involved (including whether any of them were commercial vehicles), and whether any of the parties were cited for DUI or traffic violations.
An auto injury settlement calculator then incorporates economic and noneconomic damages. Economic damages include past and present costs such as vehicle damages, medical bills including diagnostic tests, and lost wages. They can encompass future medical bills and future lost earnings too. Types of injuries, pre existing conditions, the medical prognosis, and levels of physical and mental impairment resulting from the accident are among the variables to be considered.
By their very nature, noneconomic damages are much more difficult to translate into dollars. Some of these might overlap with levels of impairment. Losing the vision in one eye, for instance, would influence future earnings for an airline pilot but not necessarily at the same amount for an accountant.
That loss of vision could nonetheless cause the accountant mental anguish, which is a noneconomic damage. Other noneconomic damages include pain and suffering, emotional distress, and diminished quality of life. Scars and other disfigurements, post-traumatic stress, newly induced agoraphobia, and the inability to participate in favorite hobbies or other activities fall under noneconomic damages. If the plaintiff were a caretaker who could no longer perform all the tasks required, such as bathing or cooking for dependents, the value of those services could fall under noneconomic damages as well.
When trying to determine noneconomic damages, a car accident settlement calculator might be used for one of two common approaches. The multiplier method assesses the tangible injuries and damages on a scale of 1.5 to 5, based on their severity and duration. The economic damages are then multiplied by the assessment figure to calculate the monetary value of the noneconomic damages.
An auto accident settlement calculator might also help determine noneconomic damages via the per diem method. This assigns a daily value to the plaintiff’s pain, suffering, and other noneconomic damages, then multiplies it by the number of days until the client is expected to make a full recovery. Often the daily value is equated to how much the plaintiff earns in a day.
Discover CloudLex’s personal injury settlement calculator
Part of the CloudLex suite of practice management software for personal injury lawyers, the Settlement Calculator intuitively calculates attorney recovery and plaintiff recovery for each offer and counteroffer. The calculator accounts for settlement amount, attorney fee percentage, expenses and disbursements, liens and medical bills, and even any referral fees to determine attorney recovery fees. What’s more, it allows you to easily log your negotiations and track your negotiation history with adjusters just as adjusters do with attorneys.
The Settlement Calculator’s customizable reports can provide you with quick overviews of matters that settled and their settlement amounts. They also show you whether the offer or demand was accepted or rejected so you can filter out the accepted settlement to focus more on the rejected matters to settle them quickly. Anyone in the firm with appropriate access permissions can check the stage of the settlement and pick up from where the previous attorney left off.
