If you already have an Orlando car accident lawyer for your case, but you feel like you’re being ignored, or your lawyer doesn’t seem to know what’s going on with your case, you’re not alone. We get calls like that a lot, from people all over Orlando. We also get calls from people whose lawyer dropped or declined their case. Here’s how we look at both situations.
If you think your Orlando lawyer is neglecting your case
The most common reason people call us wanting to switch is that their lawyer hasn’t been doing any work on the case. Several have met with me in my Orlando office to discuss whether and how to terminate their existing Orlando lawyers for not working on their cases, or even being familiar with basic facts about their cases.
Trust your intuition. It’s happened quite a few times that a client called us just because they had a feeling they were being ignored, or that the other firm didn’t really know what was going on with their case. We’ve had multi-million dollar recoveries that we think would have been almost zero had we not gotten involved.
For example, one client came to us from a huge Orlando firm right before their vehicle, sitting in a towing yard near John Young Parkway, was going to be destroyed. We used critical evidence in that vehicle to prove they were not at fault, and recovered $2.75 million. I’m quite sure that if they had waited a few more weeks to call us, they would have had a very hard time proving their case, and it would have been worth very little, if anything. You can read that story here.
In another case, a big Orlando firm told a man who was hit on I-4 near downtown that he would only get about $2,000 in his pocket, because there was only a $10,000 insurance policy. He called us, and we found another $1 million policy. He had a serious neck injury that required emergency surgery, and he could never go back to work as a semi-truck driver. We recovered the full $1 million policy limits.
So listen to your intuition, or to what you’re actually observing. Maybe your lawyer is doing the work and just isn’t communicating. But if you feel ignored, that’s not something you should ignore. Try to find out what your lawyer is doing. Ask for an update. Ask questions about what is happening in your case. If you can’t get answers, that’s when you really should start looking for a different lawyer, and the sooner the better.
“The difference with Tina Willis law is beyond belief. We switched firms… If practicing law [were] an Olympic sport, her team would get the gold!”
Fred O. · Switched firms · Google review
If you do switch, whether the old firm has any claim of a lien for their fees (on your ultimate recovery) depends on how much work they’ve actually done. We can often greatly reduce or eliminate concerns about liens early in a case.
If they’ve done more work, then their lien becomes something we need to negotiate. Whether any of that comes out of your recovery depends on the facts of the case. One factor is how big the lien is, which often turns on how much work the other lawyer actually did. The other is how much you will ultimately recover. That turns on how strong the liability (fault) case is against the other driver, the extent of your injuries, and the amount of any insurance that applies.
If another Orlando lawyer dropped or declined your case
That’s not a good sign. But it doesn’t automatically mean you don’t have a case, and we still look at it closely.
Here’s why it’s a negative. In a lot of cases, it’s obvious that one party is mostly at fault. For example, you rear-ended another car, or you ran into a tree and no other cars were involved. Rear-ending someone doesn’t always mean you were at fault. In Florida, it’s a rebuttable presumption. But in a high percentage of cases, it does mean you were at fault. That’s why it’s a presumption.
So if you rear-ended someone and another firm turned your case down, there’s a good chance the case has no value, and the other lawyer likely picked up on that too. If a case is a clear winner, most lawyers aren’t going to let it slip through. That’s not always true, but it usually is.
Mixed fault cases are different. Mixed fault (or mixed liability) means there are decent or good arguments on both sides about who caused the accident. Lawyers can have very mixed feelings about these cases, and some will only take clear winners.
The way we look at it, a mixed fault case is going to be harder to prove. It takes more money and time, in the form of experts, witness evaluation and document review. So we would usually only consider a mixed fault case if the injuries are more significant. If someone’s injury is worth a few thousand dollars, the money and time it would take us to prove it would be far more than they could possibly recover. But if the injuries are significant, there’s an argument that you’re entitled to at least 50%, if not more, and 50% of a high number is still a high number. It just has to be worth it.
What about insurance? Callers often don’t know how much insurance the other driver has. That’s common. In that case, we’ll gladly accept the case and then find out. Even if the policy is low, we still might encourage you to hire us.
Here’s why. If there are significant injuries, an insurance company will usually pay, even when liability is mixed, and sometimes even when there’s a pretty strong argument that our client was at fault.
Years ago, I represented a family who lost a loved one in a head-on collision. She had been drinking, and there was a very strong argument that she caused the crash. The other driver’s policy was $20,000. But the insurance company fell all over themselves to pay it. They didn’t know all the facts about their own driver, or what arguments we might make, and when the potential loss is that massive, saving $20,000 just isn’t worth the risk.
And if the insurance company doesn’t pay, a true mixed fault case with significant injuries may still be worth fighting for, because 50% of a large number is still a large number. We also may be able to prove the insurance company acted in bad faith by not paying the claim right away.
So the size of the policy isn’t the main factor in whether we take a case. A high policy is a bonus, because we know there’s money to recover.
Who turned your case down matters, too. Years ago, I read a Craigslist ad from a very large firm hiring for its call center. They weren’t looking for trained paralegals. They wanted people with sales backgrounds, and those are the people doing intake. Someone like that could easily miss things we would see as a potentially great case. So if we think a big firm’s call center evaluated your case, we’ll look at it even more closely. If a lawyer actually reviewed it, that’s more of a negative, because a lawyer has already decided it’s not a good case.
Often the case was dropped because the insurance company denied the claim based on the police report. We may or may not agree with them. In Florida, the police report generally can’t be used at trial to prove who was at fault, so the officer’s conclusion isn’t the final word. What matters is the actual evidence we would need to prove the insurance company wrong.
So if you believe the police report is inaccurate, for example, we’ll listen to your version of events, read the report, look at your photos, and possibly try to find more evidence to support your case.
Either way, we look at it closely, and in a meaningful percentage of these cases, we decide we’d like to represent the person.
The good news about a dropped case is that the firm that dropped it usually has little or no claim to a fee from your eventual recovery. They may still ask to be repaid for costs they advanced.
Thinking about switching?
You have the right to change lawyers. If your case was dropped, or your lawyer has gone quiet, call us and tell us what’s happened so far. We’ll be honest about whether we think you should change lawyers, whether we think we can do better (or if we think you should stay with your current lawyer, which is possible if they are likely to have a high-value lien), and what we think of your case overall.
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Tina Willis, Orlando Personal Injury & Car Accident Lawyer
Hello! I'm Tina Willis, a serious injury, accident & wrongful death lawyer based in Orlando, Florida. I graduated second in my law school class (1997) and taught federal civil procedure & legal writing at Barry University in Orlando. Before representing injury victims, I worked for a major defense firm representing excess insurers, including Lloyd's of London, where we oversaw the work of regular insurance defense lawyers on large verdict cases. So I know their defense tactics, and what it takes to maximize car and big truck accident cases.
I work with a small group of highly experienced lawyers focused on moderate to catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases: car accidents, commercial & semi-truck crashes, medical malpractice, and slip and fall accidents. We are trial attorneys who stay accessible to our clients, and we've recovered multi-millions for clients throughout Florida.
Voted a top-three winner for Best Personal Injury Firm and Best Law Firm in Orlando Weekly's 2026 Best of Orlando readers' poll.