The First Offer Is a Test, Not a Number

Say your phone rings four days after the wreck. It's the other driver's adjuster, and he's friendly. He says this one looks pretty minor, you haven't even been to the doctor yet, and they'd like to send you $1,000 to go get checked out. All you have to do is sign a release and a medical authorization so they can pull your records.

That call feels like good news. It almost never is. And if you understand what's happening on the other end of it before the phone rings, you'll handle it completely differently.

Start with who that adjuster works for. It isn't you. Their business model depends on taking in more money than they pay out, and the person on the phone is friendly because friendly gets you talking.

So the number arrives early on purpose. Four days in, you don't know yet whether the stiffness in your neck is going to resolve in two weeks or turn into an MRI, an injection and a surgical consult. Neither does your doctor. So they put a number in front of somebody who can't possibly price their own claim yet. That's why it comes when it comes.

It's also a negotiation, and negotiations run one direction. You can always go up. You can never go back down. So the first number you hear is just where they decided to start.

Two more things about that call. Do not give a recorded statement, and do not sign a blanket medical release, which is a form letting them pull every medical record you have ever generated rather than the ones connected to this crash. They will go looking through all of it for a reason to pay you less.

So think about how this works anywhere else you've haggled over something. Somebody names a price. You don't treat that price as what it's worth. You treat it as where they started, and you start somewhere else.

A settlement negotiation runs the same way. It only feels different because this is probably the one time in your life you'll do it, and the adjuster on the other end does it all day, every day. A lot of times that gap is the whole story of the call.

That's the whole thing, and it isn't personal. It matters to you in one narrow way. Treat that opening number as final and it has done exactly the job it was sent to do.

A trial threat only works if it's credible, and credibility comes from a track record an adjuster can see. My firm's published case results show a history of crash and commercial vehicle settlements I fought for rather than accepted at the first offer.

Adjusters handle the same firms in Tarrant County over and over. They know which ones file suit and which ones fold. So the record we built on other cases is already sitting on the table before we say a word about yours.

Then we send a demand letter. Basically, that's the document that lays out how the crash happened, what it did to you, what it has cost you so far and what it's going to cost you going forward, with the medical records stacked behind every piece of it.

Patience plus records is the answer to a lowball. Not anger. Anger doesn't move an adjuster, and it costs you nothing to skip it.

Rushing costs you plenty. Take an early offer and you're settling before anybody understands the full nature and extent of your injuries, and some injuries take months and months to reveal themselves. Our counters get tied to the actual settlement value, because we take our time, we develop the case, and we understand the injuries before we put a number on them.

That's a rule I hold my own team to before I ask it of any client. A case manager who lets a client's excitement about a fast number override what the file supports isn't doing that client a favor, even when the client is the one pushing to take it. Patience only works if everybody on the file holds the line, not just the person who got hurt. So when a client three weeks into treatment asks whether they should just take the number and be done, the answer is usually the same: not yet, and here's what we're still waiting on.

We don't take first offers. Other than policy limits, which is not an offer at all, it's a tender, meaning the insurer has handed over every dollar of coverage it has and there's nothing left to negotiate for, I don't think we've ever once taken one. Every attorney gets lowballed. It's a tactic, not an insult, and the number is negotiable exactly to the degree we've preserved the damages in the records.

Being genuinely willing to file is what makes that possible. Insurance companies have said to us, in almost these words, what do you mean the offer's too low, you haven't sued us yet. That's an adjuster telling you out loud that they know they're lowballing and they're waiting to see whether you'll do anything about it. So you want an attorney who is willing to go down to the courthouse and sue them, because the other side can tell the difference between a lawyer who is waiting and a lawyer who is getting ready.

Here's a way to use that call instead of just resenting it. A first offer tells you how the adjuster is reading your file so far.

Say it lands near your medical bills with nothing meaningful added for pain and suffering. That usually means they aren't crediting the severity yet. Adjusters value pain and suffering by taking your economic damages, the hard bills, and running a multiplier against them, and how high that multiplier goes is tied to how serious the records make the injury look. A low multiplier is a documentation problem, and documentation problems are fixable.

An offer that shows up unusually fast, within days of the claim opening, usually means something else. They're hoping to close the file before you understand what you have, and sometimes before a lawyer is involved at all. There's a case I still think about. A gentleman whose daughter was badly hurt signed a release for $8,000 without understanding that it released the entire claim. I believe that case was probably worth more than $100,000.

So read the offer as a signal about what still needs proving rather than as an insult, and your response stays pointed at records instead of frustration. Not every fast offer is bad faith. Some claims are that simple. Telling the two apart before you answer is worth more than any argument you could make on that call.

Quite a few things can push a claim's value up once the negotiation is underway, and I'd go through them in no particular order.

Clear liability, meaning strong proof the other driver caused the crash, takes away the adjuster's ability to shave your number by assigning you a share of the fault. Documentation of your damages, economic and non-economic both, proven through the medical records and the everyday-life evidence behind them. The severity and permanency of the injury, which is a very big lever: anything that required surgery, anything that left a lasting impairment. Leverage, which mostly means how much coverage is sitting there. And a credible trial threat on top of all of it.

Those are what we work on. None of them arrives by getting upset at an adjuster.