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Traumatic brain injury lawyer: a complete guide

A brain injury is the only catastrophic injury that routinely has to be proved to people who cannot see it. Scans often come back normal. Symptoms are dismissed as stress. The person knows something is wrong and cannot demonstrate it. This guide explains how these claims are actually proved, why the word mild is so misleading, what a case can recover, and the deadlines that quietly end claims. Talking to us is free and private.

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By Michael Mangione, Legal Research Editor Last reviewed August 1, 2026 13 min read
The core problem
Invisibility
Routine CT and MRI scans are designed to find bleeding and swelling, not the diffuse damage that causes most lasting symptoms.
How severity is graded
Glasgow Coma Scale
A score taken at the hospital. It measures the first few hours, and it does not predict who recovers.
How it gets proved
Testing plus witnesses
Neuropsychological testing measures function. People who knew you before establish what changed.
The usual defense
You were always like this
Expect an argument that symptoms are pre-existing, stress related, or exaggerated. Documentation defeats it.

Key takeaways

  • A clean scan is not a clean bill of health. Standard imaging is looking for bleeds and fractures. Most people with lasting symptoms after a head injury have unremarkable scans.
  • Mild describes the first hours, not the outcome. The classification comes from a bedside score. More than 70 percent of brain injuries are graded mild, and a share of those people do not fully recover.
  • The case is a before-and-after argument. What you could do before, what you can do now, and evidence connecting the gap to the injury. That is the whole structure.
  • Your baseline is contested territory. Cognitive testing compares you to an expected score. How that expectation is set has been litigated at the highest levels of professional sport.
Editorial content, not legal or medical advice

This guide is written and reviewed by our editorial team to be accurate and current. It is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. It is also not medical advice, and nothing here should be used to decide whether to seek care. If you have hit your head and have worsening headache, repeated vomiting, confusion, seizures, or weakness, seek emergency care now or call 911.

How common this is

The federal figures below count only the most serious outcomes. They exclude every brain injury treated in an emergency department, at urgent care, by a family doctor, or not treated at all.

68,663
brain injury related deaths were recorded in the United States in 2023, the most recent complete year.
214,110
brain injury related hospitalizations were recorded in 2020, the most recent hospitalization data.
70%+
of all traumatic brain injuries are classified as mild, which is where most disputed claims sit.
~1 in 3
of those hospitalizations involve someone aged 75 or older, where falls and blood thinners raise the stakes.

Serious brain injury outcomes, per day

Daily averages derived from federal surveillance totals. Both figures exclude injuries treated only in an emergency department, at urgent care, in primary care, or not treated at all.

Hospitalizations per day
586
Deaths per day
190

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Traumatic Brain Injury Data, updated April 27, 2026. Bar lengths are proportional to the figures shown.

01 What this kind of lawyer does

Quick answer

A traumatic brain injury lawyer assembles the medical proof that an invisible injury exists, establishes what you were like before it, retains the neuropsychologists and life care planners who translate deficits into documented losses, and defeats the argument that your symptoms are pre-existing or exaggerated.

Most injury cases fight about liability. Brain injury cases usually fight about whether the injury is real. That changes what the lawyer spends their time on almost entirely.

Building the medical record. Emergency room notes, imaging, referrals to neurology, formal neuropsychological testing, and treating physician opinions all have to line up into a coherent account of causation.

Finding the before. School transcripts, performance reviews, military records, and testimony from colleagues, coaches, and family establish who you were. Without that, there is nothing to compare the present to.

The gist

If you are not sure whether what you are experiencing is connected to a head injury, that is a normal place to start. We can help you find a lawyer when the facts support it, and say so plainly when they do not.

Bottom line: the work is proving an injury that does not photograph. Everything else follows from that.

02 What a brain injury actually is

Quick answer

A traumatic brain injury is a disruption of normal brain function caused by a bump, blow, jolt, or penetrating injury to the head. Hospitals grade severity using the Glasgow Coma Scale, a bedside score from 3 to 15. Mild is 13 to 15, moderate is 9 to 12, and severe is 8 or below. You do not have to lose consciousness to have one.

That last point matters more than almost anything else on this page. A brain injury attorney sees the same misunderstanding constantly: people assume that because they never blacked out, nothing happened.

Glasgow Coma Scale severity classification and what each grade does and does not tell you
ClassificationScoreWhat it tells you
Mild13 to 15Function was near normal in the first hours. It says nothing about whether symptoms persist.
Moderate9 to 12Meaningfully impaired responsiveness. Usually admitted, usually imaged, usually documented.
Severe3 to 8Deep impairment of consciousness. Rarely disputed as an injury, often disputed as to outcome.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

The bands above come from the scale published by Teasdale and Jennett in 1974, which remains the standard classification. See the clinical reference. The scale was built to help clinicians triage in the first hours. It was never designed to predict who will still have headaches, memory problems, and personality changes a year later, and it does not do that job well.

A note about your health

This section describes how injuries are classified, not how they should be treated. If you have hit your head and have a worsening headache, repeated vomiting, confusion, slurred speech, seizures, weakness, or you cannot be woken normally, that is an emergency. Seek care immediately or call 911. Do not wait to see whether it passes.

A narrow aisle running between tall pale archive shelving units
The record
Proving it means reconstructing who you were.

03 Do you need a lawyer?

Quick answer

If symptoms have lasted beyond a few weeks, or anyone has suggested your problems are stress or pre-existing, a traumatic brain injury lawyer is worth talking to. These are the injury claims most often undervalued, because the evidence that proves them has to be deliberately created rather than simply collected.

There are situations that resolve on their own, and an honest lawyer will say so. Here is a straightforward way to see which side of the line you are on.

Legal help almost certainly matters if

  • Symptoms such as headaches, memory trouble, irritability, or fatigue have lasted more than a few weeks.
  • You have returned to work and cannot perform the way you did.
  • Family members say you seem different, even if you do not feel different.
  • An insurer points to a normal scan as proof nothing is wrong.
  • An adjuster has raised a prior concussion, headache history, or mental health treatment.

It may be simpler than you think if

  • Symptoms resolved completely within days and have not returned.
  • No one else was at fault and no third party could be responsible.
  • All treatment is covered and nothing is being disputed.
  • You were fully evaluated, cleared, and have had no further problems.
Illustrative example

A project manager is rear-ended, declines the ambulance, and feels fine. Three weeks later she is losing her thread in meetings and sleeping ten hours a night. Her scan was normal, so the insurer treats the claim as soft tissue only. Nobody has ordered the testing that would show what changed.

Not sure whether what you are experiencing is connected? A private review will tell you, at no cost.

You can start a free case review whenever you are ready. There is no cost, no obligation, and if your situation does not call for a lawyer we will tell you that directly.

04 Why mild is the wrong word

Quick answer

Mild in this context is a triage classification describing how alert someone was in the first hours, not a prediction of how they will end up. More than 70 percent of traumatic brain injuries are graded mild, and a meaningful share of those people have symptoms that persist for months or permanently. The word does enormous damage in insurance negotiations.

This single vocabulary problem is why so many people searching for a TBI lawyer have already been told their claim is minor. An adjuster reads mild in a chart and prices the file accordingly, and the word is doing work it was never designed to do.

  • Concussion and mild TBI mean the same thing. They are used interchangeably in the medical literature. A concussion is a brain injury.
  • Loss of consciousness is not required. Feeling dazed, confused, or having a gap in memory around the event is enough for the diagnosis.
  • Most people recover. Not everyone does. Persistent symptoms after a mild injury are well documented, and the reasons are still being researched.
  • Severity at hour one does not predict outcome at year one. This is the point insurers most resist and the medical literature most supports.
Storage shelving stacked with uniform labeled archive boxes
Evidence
A normal scan is not evidence of a normal brain.

05 The invisible injury problem

Quick answer

Routine CT and MRI scans are designed to find bleeding, swelling, and fractures, because those are the findings that require urgent surgical decisions. They are not designed to detect the widespread microscopic damage that causes most lasting symptoms. A normal scan therefore does not rule out a brain injury, and a traumatic brain injury lawyer spends much of the case explaining that.

Because the imaging cannot carry the proof, it has to come from somewhere else. In practice it comes from three places at once.

  • Neuropsychological testing. A battery of standardized tests measuring memory, attention, processing speed, and executive function, interpreted against what someone with your background would be expected to score.
  • Treating physician opinion. A neurologist or physiatrist who has followed you over time and can connect the findings to the mechanism of injury.
  • Before-and-after witnesses. Colleagues, supervisors, teachers, friends, and family describing concrete changes. This is often the most persuasive evidence in the case.

Advanced imaging is sometimes offered as a solution. It can be valuable, but courts have not treated all of it as reliable enough to admit, and its acceptance varies by jurisdiction and by judge. It supplements the three sources above rather than replacing them.

06 Your baseline is the battleground

Quick answer

Cognitive testing does not produce a verdict, it produces a comparison. Your scores are measured against what someone with your age, education, and background would be expected to achieve. That expected score is an assumption, and where the assumption is set decides whether measurable impairment appears at all.

Most people have never had cognitive testing before their injury, so there is no personal baseline to compare against. The expected score is estimated instead. A brain injury attorney should be able to explain exactly how the expert reached that estimate, because the defense will attack it.

Why this matters
The baseline question was litigated in professional football
In re: National Football League Players' Concussion Injury Litigation, MDL No. 2323 (E.D. Pa.)

The NFL concussion settlement, approved in 2015 and uncapped over a 65 year term, paid retired players for qualifying neurocognitive diagnoses. For years the scoring applied race-norming, a demographic adjustment that assumed Black players had a lower baseline cognitive function to begin with. Because impairment is measured as a fall from an assumed starting point, a lower assumed baseline made it harder for Black players to qualify for the same award. After litigation brought by two retired players, the practice was ended by agreement in October 2021 and a court-approved remedy followed, allowing affected claims to be rescored. Settlement program

That dispute involved football, but the mechanism is universal. Every cognitive impairment claim rests on an assumed starting point, and that assumption is worth understanding in your own case.

Bottom line: ask how your expected baseline was calculated and what evidence of your prior functioning was given to the expert. A specific answer is a very good sign.

07 What a case can recover

Quick answer

A brain injury claim can recover past and future medical care including cognitive rehabilitation, lost income and lost earning capacity, the cost of support with daily tasks, and non-economic losses such as pain, personality change, and lost enjoyment of life. A spouse may have a separate claim for loss of consortium. What is collectible is still limited by the insurance available.

Earning capacity is usually the largest number and the most contested. A person who returns to work at the same salary but can no longer be promoted, cannot handle complexity, or is quietly managed out two years later has suffered a real economic loss that a pay stub will not show.

Categories of recoverable loss in a brain injury claim and how each is proved
CategoryWhat it coversHow it is proved
Medical careTreatment received, cognitive rehabilitation, medication, future careRecords plus a treating physician's opinion on what is still needed
Lost earning capacityThe career trajectory that is no longer availableVocational assessment plus an economist's present value calculation
Support with daily lifeHelp with organization, transport, finances, medicationHours documented and priced at local rates
Non-economicPain, fatigue, personality change, loss of enjoyment of lifeTesting results plus testimony from people who knew you before
Family claimsLoss of companionship and partnershipSpouse or partner testimony, where the state recognizes the claim

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

Be careful with calculators

Any site quoting an average brain injury settlement is guessing. Published averages combine resolved concussions with permanent disability. What drives value here is the strength of the neuropsychological evidence, the quality of the before-and-after proof, the documented effect on earning capacity, and the insurance available.

Densely packed paper files stored in an open shelving system
The first weeks
Write it down while you still notice it.

08 What to do in the first weeks

Quick answer

Get evaluated even if you feel able to walk away, tell every clinician about the head strike specifically, start a short daily symptom log, ask someone close to you to record what they notice, keep work performance records, and speak with a lawyer before giving any recorded statement. The daily log is the single highest value thing on this list.

A traumatic brain injury lawyer will tell you that the evidence which wins these cases is created in the first weeks by ordinary people writing things down, not by experts hired a year later.

1

Get evaluated, and say you hit your head

Emergency clinicians triage the most urgent problem first. If your head strike is not in the notes, the record will later suggest it never happened. Say it explicitly and make sure it is written down.

2

Start a daily symptom log

A few lines a day: headaches, sleep, memory lapses, word finding, noise and light sensitivity, mood. Contemporaneous notes are far more persuasive than a memory reconstructed for a deposition.

3

Ask someone close to you to keep their own notes

People with brain injuries often under-report, because the organ doing the assessing is the injured one. A partner, parent, or close colleague noticing changes is powerful evidence.

4

Preserve your work record

Save performance reviews, emails about missed deadlines, any accommodation you asked for. These become the evidence of lost earning capacity later.

5

Follow through on referrals

If you are referred to neurology, a concussion clinic, or for neuropsychological testing, go. Gaps in treatment are the first thing a defense expert points to.

6

Do not give a recorded statement

You are not required to give one to the other side's insurer. Saying you feel fine in week one, before symptoms surface, is used to argue nothing happened.

09 Deadlines and delayed symptoms

Quick answer

The statute of limitations for injury claims is set by state law and is commonly two years, though some states are shorter. Brain injury raises a complication other claims do not: symptoms may not be obvious for weeks. Some states apply a discovery rule that can affect when the clock starts, but that rule varies and should never be assumed.

A brain injury attorney checks both the filing deadline and the evidence timeline, and the evidence timeline is usually the one under pressure.

  1. Days 1 to 14

    Symptoms surface

    Headaches, fatigue, irritability, and memory trouble often appear after the adrenaline fades, once the person is back at work and demands increase.

  2. Weeks 1 to 4

    Notice deadlines can hit

    If a public entity or a government vehicle was involved, a formal written notice of claim may be due within 60 to 90 days in many states.

  3. Months 1 to 3

    Scene evidence disappears

    Surveillance video is overwritten, vehicles are repaired or sold, and witness memory of the impact fades.

  4. Months 3 to 12

    Testing becomes meaningful

    Neuropsychological testing done too early can be confounded by acute effects. Done at the right point, it establishes what has not resolved.

  5. Year 1 to 2

    The filing deadline arrives

    Two years is the most common period. Once it passes, a court will usually dismiss regardless of the evidence.

Bottom line: do not rely on a deadline you read online, including this one. Confirm it with a lawyer licensed where the injury happened.

10 How state law changes the answer

Quick answer

Identical injuries produce different recoveries in different states. The variables are the filing deadline, whether any cap applies to non-economic damages, how shared fault is handled, and the standard the court uses to decide whether expert testimony is admissible at all. That last one matters more in brain injury cases than in almost any other.

Because these claims depend on expert evidence, the rules governing experts are not a technicality. They can decide the case.

Why venue matters here
Two different tests decide whether your expert is heard
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993); Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923)

Every federal court applies Daubert, which asks the judge to assess whether the expert's methodology is actually reliable. A minority of states instead keep the older Frye test, which asks only whether the method is generally accepted in the relevant scientific field. California and Pennsylvania are among the states retaining a Frye style rule. Published counts of which states follow which standard disagree with each other, because many states apply hybrids and several have switched in recent years, so this is something to confirm locally rather than assume. In a claim that rests on neuropsychological testing and sometimes on advanced imaging, that choice can decide whether your proof reaches a jury at all. Cornell Legal Information Institute

  • Expert admissibility standards. As the box above explains, the same neuroimaging evidence can be admitted in one state and excluded in another.
  • Damage caps. California, for example, limits non-economic damages in medical negligence cases on a rising schedule, though economic losses there are not capped at all.
  • Shared fault. Most states reduce recovery by your share of fault. A minority bar recovery once that share crosses a threshold.
  • Government claims. Short written notice deadlines, sometimes measured in weeks, and occasionally separate damage limits.
A vintage wooden card catalog cabinet with many small drawers
Choosing counsel
Ask who they use, and why.

11 How to choose a traumatic brain injury lawyer

Quick answer

Look for a firm with a documented record in brain injury specifically rather than general injury work, an established relationship with neuropsychologists, the capacity to advance substantial expert costs, fluency in the invisible injury problem, and written contingency terms.

The single best filter is asking who they would send you to for testing. A firm that does these cases has names ready. A firm that does not will be vague.

  • Brain injury experience specifically. Ask how many they have handled and how many they have taken to verdict. The answer should be specific.
  • A named expert bench. They should name the neuropsychologists and neurologists they work with without hesitating.
  • Capacity to advance costs. Testing, expert reports, and testimony are expensive and the firm fronts them. Ask who pays if the case is lost.
  • They raise the scan issue first. If a normal CT does not come up unprompted, they do not do these cases.
  • An active, clean license. Verified good standing with the state bar and no unresolved discipline. You can check this yourself.

12 Questions to ask, and red flags

Quick answer

Ask which neuropsychologist they would use and when testing should happen, how they will establish your pre-injury baseline, how they handle a normal scan, what the deadline is in your state, and exactly what the fee agreement says about costs if you lose. Walk away from a promised number, pressure to sign today, or fee terms that are not in writing.

A consultation goes both ways. Pay attention to whether the answers are specific or evasive.

  1. Which neuropsychologist would you refer me to, and when should testing happen?
  2. How will you establish what I was like before the injury?
  3. My scan was normal. How do you handle that with the insurer and with a jury?
  4. How many brain injury cases have you taken to verdict?
  5. Who advances the expert costs, and what happens to them if we lose?
  6. What is the filing deadline, and is any notice deadline running now?
  7. What records should I be gathering right now?
  8. What are the genuine weaknesses in my case?
Walk away if you hear

A promised number. Nobody can value a brain injury before testing is done. No mention of neuropsychological testing. If it does not come up unprompted, they do not do these cases. Dismissing the normal scan as a problem. It is the central obstacle, and a firm that has not thought about it has not thought about your case. Pressure to sign today. A real firm gives you time. Anyone who contacts you first. Unsolicited approaches to injured people are restricted in most states for good reason.

How we vet every lawyer

We do not connect people with just anyone. Before we do, the attorney has to clear a checklist built for these cases. Every one of these has to be true.

  • Active, discipline-free license

    Verified good standing with the state bar, with no unresolved discipline on record.

  • Brain injury experience

    A documented track record in traumatic brain injury matters, not general practice work.

  • Access to the right experts

    Established working relationships with neuropsychologists, neurologists, and vocational experts.

  • Clear contingency terms

    Fees and case costs put in writing up front, so you know exactly how it works before signing.

Tell us what happened and we will only match you when a case genuinely fits.

Go deeper

Three companion guides covering the claims process, how value is built, and commercial vehicle recoveries.

Claims process

Brain injury claims explained

How a claim moves from diagnosis through testing to resolution, step by step.

Read more Case value

What a case is worth

The factors that actually drive value, and why published averages mislead.

Read more Settlements

Commercial vehicle recoveries

What drives recoveries when a commercial policy sits behind the injury.

Read more

Help in all 50 states

MVA Lawyer Network is a nationwide guide. Wherever the injury happened, we can connect you with an independent attorney licensed in that state.

Northeast Southeast Midwest Southwest West Coast Mountain West Gulf States Major metro markets

State law sets the filing deadline, which is called the statute of limitations, decides whether any cap applies, controls how shared fault is treated, and governs whether your expert evidence is admissible at all. In a case that depends on expert testimony, that last point can be decisive. You can start a free case review and a local, state-licensed attorney will sort this out at no cost to you.

Sources and authorities

Every clinical and numerical statement in this guide is sourced to primary authority: federal surveillance data, the court record, or a National Academies consensus report. Where a source is secondary it is identified as such.

Federal data

  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Traumatic Brain Injury Data, updated April 27, 2026. Source of the 68,663 deaths in 2023, 214,110 hospitalizations in 2020, and the per-day figures used on this page. CDC.
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Facts About TBI, including the age distribution of hospitalizations and deaths. CDC.

Clinical literature

  • National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Traumatic Brain Injury: A Roadmap for Accelerating Progress, chapter on the scope and burden of TBI, source of the finding that more than 70 percent of traumatic brain injuries are classified as mild. The report attributes that figure to Dewan and colleagues (2016). National Academies via NCBI Bookshelf.
  • Jain S, Iverson LM, Glasgow Coma Scale, StatPearls, National Center for Biotechnology Information. Source of the severity bands used in this guide. The scale was first published by Teasdale G and Jennett B, "Assessment of coma and impaired consciousness: a practical scale," The Lancet, 1974. StatPearls via NCBI Bookshelf.

Court decisions

  • Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), and Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923), the two competing standards for admitting expert testimony. Cornell Legal Information Institute.
  • In re: National Football League Players' Concussion Injury Litigation, MDL No. 2323, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Official settlement program site, including claims administrator status reports. NFL Concussion Settlement.

A note on the figures. The CDC totals count deaths and hospitalizations only. They exclude brain injuries treated in an emergency department, at urgent care, in primary care, or not treated at all, which together are far more numerous. The true incidence of traumatic brain injury in the United States is therefore substantially higher than any of the numbers on this page.

Our editorial standards

How we keep this guide accurate and worth trusting.

01

Primary sources only

Claims cite the federal dataset, the consensus report, or the court record itself, not another firm's summary of it.

02

Reviewed and dated

The page shows when it was last reviewed. The CDC republishes its TBI surveillance annually and this page is refreshed against it.

03

Editorial, not legal or medical advice

This is general information to help you make decisions, not advice about a specific case or a specific diagnosis.

04

Honest about how we operate

We are an independent referral service, not a law firm, and we may be paid a referral fee by the attorney if you hire through us.

Michael Mangione, Legal Research Editor
Michael Mangione Verified editor
Legal Research Editor · Founder, The Mangione Group, Inc.

MVA Lawyer Network is edited by Michael Mangione, who has spent more than twelve years working inside contingency-based law firms, building intake departments, designing qualification frameworks, and studying how claims are screened and pursued from the first call through resolution. He built this site to turn dense statutes and real case law into guidance people can actually use, then connect them with a lawyer worth their time. Michael is not a practicing attorney, is not a clinician, and does not give legal or medical advice. Every statement on this site is sourced to primary authority, and independent attorneys handle the legal work.

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Common questions, answered

General information, not legal or medical advice. Because these rules are set state by state, talk to a licensed attorney about your own situation.

My CT scan was normal. Does that mean I do not have a brain injury?

No. Routine CT and MRI scans are designed to find bleeding, swelling, and fractures, because those findings drive urgent decisions. They are not designed to detect the diffuse microscopic damage that causes most lasting symptoms. Most people with persistent problems after a head injury have unremarkable scans. Proof comes from neuropsychological testing, treating physician opinion, and people who knew you before.

Is a concussion the same as a traumatic brain injury?

Yes. Concussion and mild traumatic brain injury are used interchangeably in the medical literature. The word mild refers to how alert the person was in the first hours, graded on the Glasgow Coma Scale, not to how they end up. More than 70 percent of all traumatic brain injuries are classified as mild, and a meaningful share of those people have symptoms that persist.

I never lost consciousness. Can I still have one?

Yes. Loss of consciousness is not required for the diagnosis. Feeling dazed or confused, or having a gap in memory around the event, is enough. This is one of the most common misunderstandings, and insurers rely on it, so it is worth raising directly with any clinician who is documenting your care.

What is neuropsychological testing?

It is a battery of standardized tests, usually taking several hours, that measures memory, attention, processing speed, language, and executive function. The results are interpreted against what someone with your age, education, and background would be expected to score. In most brain injury cases it is the central piece of objective evidence.

What if symptoms only appeared weeks later?

That is common and it is not fatal to a claim. Symptoms frequently surface once adrenaline fades and normal demands resume. What matters is documentation: telling clinicians about the head strike, and keeping a contemporaneous record of what you notice. Some states apply a discovery rule that affects when the filing clock starts, but it varies and should not be assumed.

The insurer says my problems are pre-existing. What now?

Expect that argument in nearly every case. It is answered with evidence of your prior functioning: school and work records, performance reviews, and testimony from people who knew you before. A defendant generally takes an injured person as they find them, so a pre-existing vulnerability that was made worse can still support a claim. Discuss the specifics with a lawyer in your state.

How much is a brain injury case worth?

There is no meaningful average, and any site quoting one is guessing. Published averages mix concussions that resolved with permanent disability. What drives value is the strength of the neuropsychological evidence, the quality of the before-and-after proof, the documented effect on earning capacity, and the insurance actually available to pay.

Do I need a specialist, or will any injury lawyer do?

Specialization matters here more than in most injury cases. A TBI lawyer needs working relationships with neuropsychologists, the capacity to advance substantial expert costs, and real fluency in why a normal scan proves nothing. The fastest way to test a firm is to ask which neuropsychologist they would refer you to. A firm that does these cases has names ready.

When should testing be done?

That is a clinical judgment your treating physician and the neuropsychologist should make together. Testing done very early can be confounded by acute effects, while waiting too long risks losing the connection to the injury in the record. What matters legally is that the timing is driven by clinical reasoning that can be explained, not by convenience.

What does a lawyer cost?

These cases are handled on a contingency fee, commonly 33 to 40 percent of what is recovered, set out in the written agreement. You pay nothing up front and no hourly rate. The firm advances case costs, which here include testing and expert reports and can be substantial. Ask specifically what happens to those advanced costs if the case is lost.

Can my family help prove the case?

Yes, and they are often the most persuasive witnesses available. People with brain injuries frequently under-report their own symptoms, because the organ doing the assessing is the injured one. A partner, parent, or close colleague describing concrete changes carries real weight with adjusters and juries. Ask them to start their own notes early.

Is what I tell you private?

Yes. What you share in a case review is kept private and is used only to match you with an attorney who fits your situation. One distinction is worth understanding: true legal confidentiality, called attorney-client privilege, only attaches once you actually have an attorney-client relationship with a lawyer. Submitting a form to a referral service is not the same thing. If that matters to you, raise it directly with the attorney.

How do I choose a good brain injury lawyer?

Look for a documented record in brain injury specifically rather than general injury work, named relationships with neuropsychologists and neurologists, the financial capacity to advance expert costs, and written contingency terms. A good traumatic brain injury lawyer will raise the normal scan problem before you do. It also helps to use a service that vets lawyers before connecting you.

What does it cost to use MVA Lawyer Network?

Nothing. We are a free, independent referral service, not a law firm, and we do not give legal advice. Requesting a case review costs you nothing and puts you under no obligation. When a situation fits, we connect you with an independent brain injury attorney who reviews it directly, and we may be paid a referral fee by that attorney. That fee does not add anything on top of their contingency percentage. You can read more about how we operate.

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