Conclusions of California Study on Value of Lawyers in Work Comp Claims

Earlier today I posted a link to a Business Insurance Journal article but then I realized that readers of the blog may have trouble accessing that article.  To solve that problem I have summarized it here for you:

The CWCI (California Workers’ Compensation Institute), which is apparently an industry-funded research agency, released a report to its members in early February, 2014 that analyzed whether lawyers increased the costs to the insurance industry of workers’ compensation claims. The CWCI studied California work comp cases from 2005 to 2010 and determined that:

More than 11.6 percent of all California comp claims and more than 80% of claims in California for permanent disability benefits involve attorneys, resulting in significantly higher costs [to the insurance companies] compared with claims in which attorneys are not involved.

Specifically, temporary disability claims that involved an attorney resulted in an average of $30,319 in benefits and expenses, compared to an average of $5,598 for such claims without attorney involvement. About 7% of such claims involved litigation.

Permanent disability claims involving attorneys (about 80% of such claims in the state during that period had attorney involvement) resulted in an average of $66,208 in benefits and expenses compared to $25,300 for such claims that did not involve attorneys.

Claims involving attorneys had an average of 122 days out of work, whereas claims that did not involve attorneys had an average of 31 days out of work.

It seems to me that attorney involvement was mostly on the more serious claims.

But it is also pretty clear to me from this industry analysis that workers who engaged a competent attorney got a lot more in benefits than workers who did not use an attorney on their cases.    Bob Bollinger