Guiding Principles

Cloutier Law Office’s Guiding Principles

You come to a personal injury attorney with a case that is personal. It’s a case that has profoundly impacted your life in a painful way, which is why you deserve to know your attorney’s approach to cases and client relationships. Earning your trust is one of the most important parts of our business, which is why we created our Client Bill of Rights and work within these Guiding Principles.

A CUSTOMER-BASED, SERVICE-ORIENTED APPROACH

Too many personal injury firms do not take a customer-based, service-oriented approach to handling personal injury cases. Here, you are given our Client Bill of Rights and Client’s Guide to Personal Injury Cases from the beginning so you understand our approach to serving you and get many questions answered about the legal process right at the start.

Your case is yours, not ours. Throughout the legal process we act as your employees, not the other way around. While being involved in a personal injury case is never easy, you deserve as pleasant of an experience as possible, and we will do everything we can to make that happen. This includes having easy online access to important documents and exclusive resources for you as our client.

As someone who has suffered an injury or loss, you have the right to be kept informed and to be treated with dignity and compassion. You also have the right to have legal and other issues involved in their cases fully explained so you can make informed decisions.

Face-to-face? Online? A phone call? Your preferred method of communication is our preferred method, and we make ourselves readily available to discuss any matter related to your case. Perhaps most importantly, we fully believe and acknowledge that, as our client, you have the right to make the important decisions about prosecuting or settling your case and to be given adequate information and advice to assist in making those decisions.

A FOCUS ON PREPARING YOUR CASE FOR TRIAL

Most personal injury cases do not end up going to trial. However, we believe strongly that the only proper way to handle each case is to assume it, in fact, will go to trial, and we start building your case on Day One. Interestingly, preparing for and thinking about the trial from the beginning of the case is what makes prompt and fair settlements more likely.

The best way to achieve a prompt and fair settlement is to demonstrate to the other side that you and your lawyer and paralegals are prepared to go to trial and are ready to make a convincing case to a jury. Doing that often convinces the other side that it is better to settle the case than to risk a bad result at trial. Of course, if a trial is still necessary, this approach has the advantage of making sure that we will be ready for it.

CONSISTENT PERFORMANCE WITH AN EXCLUSIVE CASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Too often, personal injury attorneys force clients to choose (or choose for them) between speed (getting the case resolved as quickly as possible) and thoroughness (making sure things are done thoroughly and correctly, with no mistakes that will harm the case). This usually comes with a reactive, act-only-when-needed way of handling cases that is both slow and ineffective.

In response to our desire to provide a smooth and thorough experience consistently for our clients, Cloutier Law Offices developed a proprietary proactive case management system, called CaseMaster © 2016, 2004. Exclusive to Cloutier Law Offices, it incorporates a timeline-driven series of detailed checklists and other tools that allow us to move your case along in a logical, step-by-step method, to help ensure both thoroughness and speed. It’s complex and involves over two thousand tasks and items for each case, and over seven thousand documents and other tools linked to the system. We are constantly refining and revising the system, improving and updating it to keep up with changes in the law and technology.

The result? A more thorough case is built and a more satisfying experience is delivered to our clients…consistently.

CLIENT SATISFACTION-BASED GROWTH, NOT ADVERTISING DRIVEN

95% of our cases are referral driven, not advertising based, which is rare in this industry that is well known for their extensive advertising ~ they’re everywhere! The greatest compliment we can be paid is when a former or current client, a physician or even another attorney recommends us to a potential client. It’s then that we know we’ve met our goal of achieving more than financial success.

And while it’s important people are aware of you, we feel even this website doesn’t tell you everything you need to know to make the best choice for your representation. That’s why we offer a free introductory consultation to allow us to get to know each other before any commitment is made.

Finally, we believe in and have dedicated our careers to the principles in the Indiana Oath of Attorneys and the Indiana Bill of Rights: