411 Pain – A Lawyer Referral Service to Avoid
If you live in South Florida, chances are that you have seen billboards for 411 Pain or heard one of their radio commercials. The jingles are undeniably catchy—“1-800-411-PAIN! After 911 call 411!” They suggest that you should call 411 immediately after you hang up with 911.
Their hope is to inundate us with so much advertising to override the logical reasoning of injury victims after an accident. Their ads fail to tell you that the lawyers who elect to become members of 411 Pain pay a fee to receive case referrals. The truth is, for-profit lawyer referral services merely act as a middle-man, accepting calls from injured parties and transferring those calls to an attorney who happens to be next in line for a referral.
411 Pain is a “pay-to-play” referral service. The only requirement to join 411 Pain, or any other another lawyer referral service, is to pay the requisite fee. Ability, skills, or experience are not part of their admissions requirements. Although the truth behind its flimsily constructed façade has been publicly known for over a decade, 411 Pain is as strong as ever.
How does 411 Pain decide the attorney best suited to handle your case? Once they have you on the line, the operator refers you to whichever attorney is next in line and has paid their fee to 411 Pain. That is the extent of their matchmaking services for injury victims.
The attorney you end up with may have little or no experience in handling auto collision cases. By calling 411 Pain, you place your trust in an individual sitting in a call center who is neither a licensed attorney nor a physician. In fact, the person answering your call is likely no more knowledge about personal injury claims than yourself.
This is not to say that all law firms in the 411 Pain network are bad, though at least some. The problem is calling them leaves an important health or legal decision to what literally amounts to a dice roll.
This process empowers a random operator, who likely lacks any specialized training, to make decisions that greatly impact the potential value of your legal claim. 411 Pain really provides no benefit to the injured party at all. You would be better served finding an attorney, on your own, by researching for one on Google.