Updated: June 10, 2022
(BC has moved to a no-fault insurance system so if you were injured in a motor vehicle accident, you may not find a personal injury lawyer as necessary as before; nevertheless, it is good to consult one of these personal injury lawyers to know your options. The article is still relevant for any other accidents or personal injury requiring a personal injury lawyer in Vancouver as the focus is on competenace, care, and community opinion.)
Injured? Looking for a car accident lawyer in Vancouver? Here’s a list of five personal injury lawyers that you can trust.
When looking for the best personal injury lawyers in Vancouver, we’ve looked to identify firms who portray the following qualities:
(1) experienced – We sought to find personal injury lawyers with a high rate of successes.
A few personal injury lawyers we’ve found have worked previously for ICBC’s legal team and have a good grasp of their system & processes which then enables them to fight your case better.
(2) personable – not the used car salesman personality but someone who cares about you.
Many personal injury lawyers also have excellent contacts and networks with medical specialist who would be able to help you better; we have considered this as well. You want a personal injury lawyer who cares for your well being and will connect you with experts to progress your recovery.
(3) rates – the rates are fairly standard. Most personal injury lawyers in Vancouver will only bill you when/if you win.
The lawyer or firm you engage will take a percentage of the fees recovered. The standard and maximum legally permissible is 33%; this can add up depending on the firm when accounting for interest and disbursements. [Many firms will charge disbursements on top the 33% CFA fee and some may charge interests for the deferred payment which can easily eat up 45% to 55% of your total case award or settlement.] You should consider the value and complexity of your case before engaging a personal injury lawyer. However it should be noted, it’s always easier outside looking in; it may seem trivial but the work involved will take a lot of valuable time for personal injury lawyers who are well deserving of their dues – especially those who legitimately care for their clients, many of whom we have listed bellow. There are a few personal injury lawyers who will work at 20% contingency fee but remember when it comes to personal injury lawyers, this is not an area you want to skimp on a few dollars; you should expect at least 25% contingency fee for a case that doesn’t go to court.
We wanted to find a Vancouver personal injury lawyer that will help you well and charge you fairly; being that most personal injury lawyers work on a Contingency Fee Agreement of 33%, we emphasized our focus on law firms that had value-added services for their personal injury law practice (network of medical specialist, excellence in customer service, medical financing). In my opinion, if you require a personal injury lawyer – the percentage of the award damages they take should be secondary to their network, service, and experience. If your case is simple and trivial, you may be better without a personal injury lawyer or a lower fee. Nevertheless, it is always worth while to get the free consultation as some personal injury lawyers can help you get a better settlement even for a smaller accident.
If one personal injury lawyer is not able to take on your case, do not be offended as they are often busy. If a lawyer has a reputation of dropping cases when a bigger, more profitable opportunity arises, then be careful in choosing to engage them. Don’t worry, we’ve tried to help you filter those bad outliers, out of the top 5 listed bellow. (pun not intended)
In summary, here are five reliable personal injury lawyers in Vancouver
1) Watson Goepel LLP: Two partners and several associates serve personal injury clients with a track record of successful litigation for their clients.
2) Hammerberg Lawyers LLP: A philanthropic firm that serves clients well.
3) Murphy Battista LLP: A major personal injury law practice in Vancouver that does it right with customer service and recovery support.
4) Sugden, Mcfee, & Roos LLP: An established and reputable personal injury law firm in Vancouver with a notorious reputation for excellence and experience. Various Queen’s Counsel lawyers.
5) Specht and Pryer: Small but personable and effective personal injury law firm in Vancouver downtown.
The process of finding Vancouver personal injury law firms:
Before we highlighted a personal injury lawyer on our VancityAsks‘ top five list of personal injury lawyers, we want to be sure you can trust their work.
We have thoroughly check through reviews for validity, truthfulness, and the general sentiments of clients.
We’ve checked a lawyer’s experience and personality. We’ve also looked for community involvement and generosity which is indicative of the service you can expect.
We have considered the general expertise, connections, and value-added services that clients receive. (For example, does the law firm help cover your medical fees first?)
We have avoided listing any personal injury lawyers that also manage cases by ICBC. The concern some personal injury clients have about working with a personal injury lawyer who takes cases with ICBC is whether it should serve a conflict of interest to them, the plaintiff. While this may be less of a concern with a lawyer, why take the risk?
In the process of identifying the best personal injury lawyers in Vancouver, we’ve combed through 50 lawyer/firms and scrutinized ten to select our top 5 list of personal injury lawyers. This is a time-intensive process that’s manually completed to provide a reliable list of personal injury lawyers.
Some other sites simply algorithmic-ly curate their list or base off superfluous details (years of practice – personal injury law is such a lucrative field, a lawyer who may not care about you can still operate profitably for years.) or falsified reviews. (In our process of weeding out reviews, we’ve come across one or two firms with cleverly falsified reviews. As a FYI, you can typically tell reviews are falsified by observing the profile of the reviewers among other factors.) Many personal injury lawyers seem like great options on the surface, a mirage, a picture with Photoshop, but a deeper look shows there are better options for you as a personal injury victim.
Effectively, we’ve done the hard work for you and cut through all the fat, gimmick, and head-strong advertising to find reliable personal injury lawyers to help you. These are individuals who are great at what they do, work with integrity, passionate about helping their clients, and charge a standard rate.
We curate our list before contacting any of these firms for further questions and verification. The content is also not sponsored nor will be; neither do we have any prior relationships with these firms or receive any monetary compensation from these personal injury lawyers – this is intended to minimize any bias.
The Best Personal Injury Lawyers in Vancouver:
Watson Goepel is a mid-size Vancouver law firm founded in 1984; they are now a Canadian law firm with 30 lawyers providing legal services from family law to personal injury law. They work with large organizations, small businesses, entrepreneurs, families, and individuals; Watson Goepel has experience working with all spectrum of Vancouver law.
The personal injury law practice is handled by Anastase E. Margos and Janet S. De Vita. The two firm’s partners are supported by three paralegal and one assistant. While the team is small relative to other personal injury law firms, they are an agile team with significant experience in Vancouver’s personal injury law, whether it is attaining settlement or winning cases at trial. Anastase and Janet have effectively attained settlements for their clients, and won cases for clients in BC courts. The two experienced personal injury lawyers work tireless for their clients. They are the ideal solution for many of their clients; working with a lawyer, just like many facets of life is about a relationship – with this agile, experienced, and knowledgeable team of two, clients know exactly who is overseeing their case and what they can expect. Engaging Watson Goepel’s personal injury law services avails you to an experienced team with the support and network of a mid-size firm. The personal injury law practice at Watson Goepel also has an associate lawyer, Britni M. Troy working with the two partners. She also exclusively focuses on personal injury law, having seven years of experience in personal injury law practice.
When you hire a boutique personal injury law firm in Vancouver with several personal injury lawyers, while the firm may have a good support network and system in place, your experience will vary by the lawyer who actually takes on your case. At Watson and Goepel, both Janet and Anastase are respected in their field of practice. Both are well mannered and very educated with personal injury law. Anastase Maragos and Janet De Vita carry their expertise beyond legal practice with an emphasis on cultural and community volunteer commitments. Their process to addressing personal injury law claims takes a three phase approach; (1) evaluate how hurt the victim is, (2) identify how to help the client get better, and (3) addressing the claim and personal injury settlement or litigation. If you require a personal injury lawyer, be sure to reach out to Watson Goepel to inquire if they are able to help.
Website: http://watsongoepel.com/service-groups/personal-injury-law/
Address: 1700- 1075 W Georgia St Vancouver, BC V6E 3C9
Hammerberg Lawyers operates differently from most traditional law firms; they appear to be the ideal, client-orientated, community-focused, professionally-experienced Vancouver personal injury law firm. A combination of compassion, approach-ability, and results brings Hammerberg Lawyers LLP firm to the forefront of personal injury lawyers – #3 on VancityAsks and likely to climb in time.
Hammerberg Lawyers LLP is also a mid-sized law firm in Vancouver, BC who focuses only on personal injury claims, business law, and strata/condominium issues. The personal injury practice at Hammerberg Lawyers LLP is served by Morgyn Chandler, Douglass Chiu, David Maglio, James Mcbride, Dale Mcgregor, Kevin Mclaren, Curtis Ronning, Krista Simon, Alan Truong, and Joel Zanatta. This composes one of the largest personal injury group of lawyers in Vancouver; the combined experienced of these lawyers form a formidable team. Each of the 11 personal injury lawyers at Hammerberg Lawyers LLP are rightfully respected in their personal injury practice with lawyers like David Maglio holding 31 years of experience, or Douglass Chiu actively involved with community events, or Krista Simon who was formerly the President of the Trial Lawyers Association of BC. Several personal injury lawyers at Hammerberg Lawyers LLP have also worked previously to represent the interests of insurance corporations but now work solely for personal injury clients, putting their insight and expertise to use. If you need a personal injury lawyer, you can be confident that Hammerberg Lawyers LLP is a leading personal injury law firm in Vancouver. By specializing their focus on only three essential legal practices, they are able to serve their clients better than most general practice law firms in Vancouver. You have a specialized service from experienced lawyers who have likely worked on many cases requiring a similar skill-set/knowledge to yours.
Achieving results for their clients while connecting with their clients on a personal level is their commitment. Hammerberg Lawyers LLP remains steadily committed to their clients, staff, and lawyers emphasizing on the human factor – relationships. Their mission is summarize to three words: (1) Service (2) Integrity (3) Results. This is something we are very ecstatic to find at VancityAsks; we always value businesses that build on excellence, relationships and customer service.
In summary, clients can expect friendly, unpretentious, and compassionate service without sacrificing experience, knowledge, or results at Hammerberg Lawyers LLP. If you require a Vancouver personal injury lawyer, contact the experienced and friendly lawyers at Hammerberg Lawyers LLP for a free consultation.
Website: http://www.hammerco.net/our-services/personal-injury/
Address: 1200 West 73rd Avenue, Suite 1220, Vancouver, BC V6P 6G5
Post Note: Similar to Murphy Battista LLP, Hammerberg Lawyers LLP also emphasizes on giving back to the community and encourage their lawyers to do the same. It can be inferred, looking for law firms who contribute meaningfully to their community can be a sure-bet to finding compassionate legal service which is especially important for personal injury victims. I believe this reflects their motivation beyond extrinsic factors to intrinsic factors which is widely considered to be necessary for service excellence. (Which we try to identify businesses who do so at VancityAsks.)
As a tangent, looking beyond giving back and identifying the causes that firms invest in as well can provide a good perspective on the firm, their motivation and commitment to the community. For example, (1) if a personal injury law firm invests into brain injury research, it differs from, (2) if an individual at the firm invests into their child’s coaching or scouts which is different from, (3) if a business invest into community-orientated/social causes obscure from the industry space.
These obscure details can infer a lot when considered collectively. (For the most part, with Gen Y consumers being inclined to value purchasing, many businesses consider it a necessity to give back to the community and beneficial for their bottom online to do so – that’s great but we also want to carefully identify where there may be a habit of giving back for intrinsic motivation – as well because they love our amazing city we live in. The reason so as mentioned is intrinsic motivation typically reflects a pattern of excellence. Extrinsic motivation only brings you so far – you see it yourself, some people never seem satisfied with the amount they have; the more you have the more you need – extrinsic motivation can even be a trade-off to intrinsic motivation. (Once the hygiene factors are settled, intrinsic motivation generally results in better performance/service/results than extrinsic motivation. In effect, as drgiggs puts it on an online forum, “extrinsic for short term and intrinsic for long term.”) We also try to gauge the overall corporate personality/culture with their online profile – further contacting the businesses for clarification after the fact if required. If this interests you, you may enjoy reading Remote-Entrepreneur by Joseph Ong.
Murphy Battista is a law firm founded in Vancouver, BC. They specialize specifically with personal injury law. The firm begun it’s operations in early 2000 founded by two partners, Joe Battista and Joe Murphy. Both Joe and Murphy have the prestigious “Queen’s Counsel” title which is appointed by the Attorney General. It recognizes lawyers for their service, excellence, and/or community involvement. Both Joe and Murphy have been practicing law in B.C. since 1976 and 1975 respectively. Their experience in personal injury law and trial law is undisputed. Joe Murphy was the former president of the Trial Lawyers Association in B.C.
The firm works with cases pertaining to (1) injury claims inclusive of brain injury, chronic pain, orthopedic injuries, and soft tissue injuries among others, (2) accident and negligence claims inclusive of dog bites, medical malpractice, or motor vehicle accidents among others and, (3) insurance disputes inclusive of accident benefits, denied claims, or flood and theft claims among others. Murphy Battista LLP has another 16 lawyers on its team with varying specialized expertise; a few of the lawyers at Murphy Battista are individual law corporations having a separate practice. Besides Joe Murphy and Joe Battista, some notable lawyers at the firm includes John Cameron, Derek Mah and Scott Gibson. John Cameron was a former police officer who then studied at UBC law school on a special exemption (indicative of his determined and resourceful character).
The firm also offers free initial consultations. As typical with personal injury lawyers in Vancouver, Murphy Battista will work on a contingency basis. They will take a percentage of your settlement/award (typically 20%-33%). Murphy Battista also works with a network of health professionals to help clients with their recovery. The firm will front the medical fees until your case is settled. We’ve featured Murphy Battista at #1 on our Vancouver personal injury lawyers content because of their experience with personal injury law. Having an experienced personal injury lawyer is important to ensure the optimal outcome for your case whether by settlement or trial if necessary. Murphy Battista also has a strong emphasis on client’s well-being with a network of health professionals which will be able to help personal injury victims. We noted their emphasis on their clients’ wellness which is important – personality & priorities – to our search for the best personal injury lawyers in Vancouver. More notably, we appreciate their commitment to the local community with the Personal Injury Resource Centre. The Centre provides pro-bono assistance and a listening ear for those who may not be able to seek damages for their injury. If you require a personal injury lawyer to assist, contact Murphy Battista for a free consultation.
Website: http://www.murphybattista.com/
Address: 2020 – 650 W Georgia St, Vancouver, BC V6B 3K9
4) Sugden, Mcfee, & Roos LLP:
SMR is a boutique Vancouver law firm that practices primary with personal injury law and other litigation aspects. The firm consists of 11 lawyers, three of whom are appointed the Queen’s Counsel status. Among whom, David Crossin Q.C. was the former president of the Law Society of British Columbia; notably as well Albert Roos Q.C. is a personal injury lawyer with over 30 years’ legal experience. You will appreciate the firm’s legal experience when working with SMR; they are highly respected and reputed legal firm in Vancouver for litigation expertise.
They are not very open about their process for handling personal injury cases and neither is there further information regarding financing, fees, or medical assistance available (in contrast, Murphy and Battista works on contingency and will be able to cover your medical fees until your case is won.) There are three lawyers at SMR that specializes their practice in personal injury law; you can expect either Albert Roos Q.C., Michael Shirreff, or Allison Jackson to be assisting on your personal injury case (listed by years of experience).
We have highlighted Sugden, Mcfee & Roos as the #4 best personal injury lawyers in Vancouver for their consistent track record, experience, and reputation as a leading litigation and personal injury boutique law firm in Vancouver.
Website: http://www.smrlaw.ca/
Address: 375 Water St #700, Vancouver, BC V6B 5C6
5) Specht and Pryer:
Specht and Pryer is a law firm conveniently located in the heart of downtown Vancouver. The firm does everything from family law to personal injury however without reservation, their specialty lies with personal injury law. Mr.Pryer has formerly acted as counsel for insurance corporation much like several lawyers at Hammerberg Lawyers LLP; the experience working for insurance corporation can provide additional insight and experience to helping personal injury clients. Mr.Pryer is easily accessible to his clients; he is the only lawyer at Specht and Pryer (as Specht has unfortunately passed on) but is helped by two legal assistants and one paralegal. Reviews from Specht and Pryer clients have been overwhelmingly positive which is a testament with their commitment to customer service.
Website: http://www.spechtandpryer.com/
Address: 789 W Pender St #1150, Vancouver, BC V6C 2X1
Conclusion – Vancouver, BC Personal Injury Law:
While this may sound like an all too familiar promotional pitch; do remember that VancityAsks’ recommendations are not sponsored to ensure the best interest of consumers. We genuinely sought to find the best personal lawyers in Vancouver; we hope this will enable you to make a better decision and save valuable time.
Thank you for reading our article regarding the best Vancouver personal injury lawyer. With no exaggeration, the creation of this list has been the combination of over 20 man hours as we genuinely sought to help you find some of the best personal injury lawyers in Vancouver.
The Purpose – We hope you’ve found this beneficial for your situation. Being injured can already be an unfortunate experience…picking the right personal injury lawyer to guide you through the claim, negotiation or even the trial process can be beneficial to ensure you get a fair deal and a peace of mind. On the other hand, choosing a wrong personal injury lawyer can cause you more hassle than relieve.
We’ve taken time to discover about the firms’ personality, values and care for their client; learn about their experience, successes, and special benefits such as medical financing before featuring any firms on VancityAsks.
Negatives – In the course of doing so, we’ve found a lot of “best personal injury lawyers” recommended elsewhere who have adopted shady marketing practices. We’ve chosen not to highlight any of these lawyers; integrity is critical character trait and prerequisite to be mentioned on VancityAsks.com. (While some of these personal injury lawyer actually seem to be good personal injury lawyers, we still decided against mentioning their services in view of the bad marketing practices.) If you can’t trust your lawyer, what good is he/she?
Positives – We also valued firms and individuals that give back to the community. This demonstrates their character and care as a reflection to serving their clients well, beyond personal incentives.
If you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions regarding our top 5 Vancouver personal injury lawyers, please comment bellow!
Disclaimer: The writer of this article has no professional legal experience and no aspects of this article should be constituted as legal advice. We compile this list after extensive fact-checking, follow-ups and community recommendations however no warranties can be made to the list.
Updates:
– July 15, 2017:
Revised Murphy Battista LLP from #1 to #3.
Revised Watson Goepel LLP to #1 and Hammerberg Lawyers LLP to #2.
– October 2016:
Here are two firms who haven’t quite met the requirements to make it into our top 5 list of personal injury lawyers in Vancouver. These two firms are still reputed personal injury law firms in Vancouver and would likely be able to help you well should the five firms mentioned above be unavailable to assist.
Beck Robinson & Company:
Beck Robinson & Company is a boutique law firm that specializes in personal injury law but also does corporate law among other services. Beck Robinson & Company is a small team of five lawyers however each lawyer working at Beck Robinson & Company is exceptionally experienced with Richard Robinson holding close to 40 years of experience as a lawyer. Their office is conveniently located near VGH on West Broadway Street; they also are glad to make personal visits at your convenience.
While the lawyers at Beck Robinson & Company have an excellent reputation and are highly capable with helping personal injury clients…the biggest draw back remains that Beck Robinson & Company also does insurance defense (helping insurance corporations fight against personal injury claims); this may be a concern for some personal injury clients. If our opinion, those who work on insurance defense should ideally work exclusively for insurance defense. As mentioned earlier, we will not include any personal injury law firm who also does insurance defense in our top 5 list.
Address: 686 W Broadway #700, Vancouver, BC V5Z 1G1
Jarvis McGee Rice Trial Lawyers LLP:
Jarvis McGee Rice Trial Lawyers LLP is a leading boutique Vancouver law firm specializing in personal injury and trial lawyers. Their convenient location in downtown Vancouver. The firm has a reputation for precedence setting cases with an experienced legal team ready to serve their clients. The experience of the four partners on the firm provide a strong back bone to the firm’s success. Their office is conveniently located in downtown Vancouver with a friendly professional and approachable team of personal injury lawyers, eager to help. Notably Jarvis, McGee, and Rice hold a formidable reputation as trial lawyers which can aid their clients in a settlement process regardless if your case goes to trial.
Address: 980 Howe St #820, Vancouver, BC V6Z 0C8