Injury, disability, and death cases are hard on people and their families.
At Osterbind Law, we know that accepting that realization is hard. Our job is to make your life easier.
While finding the right lawyer shouldn’t be hard, it is.
Hiring a personal injury lawyer is often the most important legal decision you can make.
But how do you make a good decision? You can’t know a good lawyer from a bad lawyer based on a billboard or commercial? Or any other advertisement for that matter.
Most people don’t have to hire a lawyer except once or twice in their lifetime. Those times are usually for estate planning or some other positive event like adoption or buying a home. Other times may be for something hard like a criminal charge or a domestic issue.
Before you hire a personal injury lawyer though, there are a few things you should consider about the law firm. These things will likely affect how your case will be handled.
It is not often that a person has to hire a lawyer for a significant injury, disability, or death.
So, what should you look for when you hire a lawyer?
1. A Real Personal Injury and Disability Team
Teamwork is a cornerstone at Osterbind Law. Without it, we would not be able to do what we do.
So many law firms are set up where each lawyer maintains his or her own caseload. Each lawyer is a silo. That lawyer may have one paralegal or secretary to assist with the caseload. Other lawyers may share a paralegal with another lawyer or two.
At Osterbind Law, our team works together to solve hard problems. We all share responsibility for our cases and we work together to push them toward resolution.
Some law firms say that they are a team. They are not. Don’t be fooled.
A team means more than asking for advice now and then. We share responsibility for cases. We trust each other to do our jobs well. But when we see something has not been done, we step up to have each other’s backs.
2. Real Experience and Know-How
Injury and disability lawyers have to know the law. This is not as easy as saying where you went to law school and that you passed the bar.
Knowing injury and disability law is unique. Every situation is different and how the law applies may be different.
You don’t want a primary care doctor operating on your brain. And you don’t want a general practitioner to resolve your injury or disability case.
But more than that, they need to know what they are doing. That is to say, they need to have the experience to say the right thing at the right time.
Trial lawyers have to think on their feet. We learn how to practice the law in the courtroom by being in the courtroom. Experience in front of judges and juries is essential.
Our lawyers have devoted their careers to helping injured and disabled people recover money from insurance companies. We have spent years negotiating and litigating these cases so that we can provide the best advice for our clients.
3. Open and Timely Communication
The number one bar complaint against lawyers is communication. People try calling their lawyers to get answers about their case, and they can’t get through or they can’t a return call.
That is not right. You should always know what is going on in your case. It is, in fact, your case. It is not your lawyer’s case. And, you have the right to know what is going on.
At Osterbind Law, we pay a good deal of money every year for the sole purpose of keeping our clients up to date on their cases.
Our case management system provides a client portal that notifies you of every update in your case. Every document that comes into our office and goes out is uploaded to your client portal. That way, you always know what is going on with your case. If you don’t understand what is going on, you can send a message or a text and get answers quickly.
4. Relentless Effort and Infinite Compassion
We’ve all seen the “We Care” commercials, right? They seem so fake.
Well, your lawyer shouldn’t be fake. And, you’re lawyer shouldn’t seem fake.
It is impossible to represent a human being and accomplish a good result if we don’t believe in our client.
At Osterbind Law, we are very selective about who we represent. We only represent people we believe in.
Let me say that again, we only represent people we believe in.
Other lawyers will take any case that comes in the door because, well, you got to pay the bills. But we flip that belief around: we pay our bills by only representing those people we believe in.
There are good cases and bad cases. We will fight tooth and nail for the people who deserve it the most.
Our clients are not the stereotypical injury and disability victims. Our clients are survivors. They want to do the right thing. And they want the insurance company to do the right thing too. Our strength comes from within.
Do you want to meet us?
Do you want Osterbind Law to consider taking your case?
Our Core Values
1. Invested
We are invested in each other. As a team, we care for and are committed to each other. But we are also invested in our clients. The cases we work on are real-life situations for real people. As a firm, we invest ourselves in those people. As a result, we invest ourselves in those cases.
2. Driven
Every single person at our firm is driven to succeed. Success is the only option, failure is not. That means that we come to work every day with an internal drive to win. Nobody has to push us over the finish line. We are sprinting towards it. It’s about who we are.
3. Courageous
We are not scared to do things that cause fear. Fear is a normal emotion. It manifests in many ways. Courage is persisting in the face of fear. So, even though an argument or a trial may be nerve-racking, or fear-inducing, we push forward anyway. Nothing, not even normal internal human emotions, will get in our way. If we can push back the internal resistance, we can push back the external resistance. Our team is courageous.
The Osterbind Law Story
Osterbind Law opened in June 2017 as a law firm dedicated to the idea that we help people who have been injured through no fault of their own.
Brandon and Kelly Osterbind, husband and wife, started this law firm together and currently work together on cases.
But that isn’t where this story began.
Brandon and Kelly met in law school and got married in 2008.
Their paths were very different, but each path led to the same place.
Brandon started working as a part-time receptionist at a small law firm when he was in high school in the late 90s early 2000s. Brandon was fortunate that the lawyers there taught him the essentials of the real-life practice of law while he worked during high school, college, and law school.
Since law school, Brandon clerked for Judge Petty on the Court of Appeals of Virginia. After his term concluded, he joined a small law firm in Central Virginia as an associate. It took two years of hard work and that law firm made him a partner in 2012. Brandon said “I am sincerely grateful for the opportunities afforded to me and for those who invested in me. I am who I am today, in part, because of them.”
Kelly spent many years as a prosecutor here in Central Virginia. She is a trial lawyer who has extensive experience in handling cases and preparing witnesses and evidence for trial. She has prosecuted everything from traffic offenses to violent felonies. Her cases have been covered by WSET and the Lynchburg News & Advance.
Kelly has also been an adjunct professor for Liberty University Helms School of Government and Liberty University School of Law teaching law students how to practice law.
Now, Kelly helps prepare personal injury clients and cases for trial and she helps prepare our ERISA disability appeals.
Together, Kelly and Brandon are committed to helping the people of the greater Lynchburg area recover from trauma and litigate personal injury and disability cases so that every day people can put a roof over their heads and food on their table.
What is Next (something is always changing)?
Just like everything in our culture, the practice of law is changing rapidly. Clients expect different methods when it comes to purchasing legal services. You expect efficiency in case management, proficiency in the delivery of legal services, and constant communication and delivery of that information.
Over the last couple of years, Brandon and Kelly have been working, researching, and experimenting with some ideas to create new processes and systems in our everyday practice so that we can better deliver legal services to our clients.
We become more efficient, more proficient, and more informative every day because what we currently do can always be done better. These ideas that we are talking about cannot exist in a vacuum. It is an entirely new way of delivering legal information and performing legal services that we hope will blow you away.
We pride ourselves on constantly changing and innovating for our clients’ benefit. As we continuously evolve our delivery of legal services, we promise to stay abreast of new technology, to use it to our clients’ advantage, and to use it to add value to our clients’ cases.
Working With Osterbind Law
We look forward to working with you.
If you have any questions, please call us and we can discuss how the law applies to your case and how we might be able to help you.
But you may not be ready to hire an injury lawyer just yet. And we understand that which is why we offer free information throughout this website on our FAQ page, our blog page, and our case successes page.
We want you to see who we are and how we help people. You deserve to understand the legal issues.
We also offer free, no-obligation strategy sessions. Our firm doesn’t offer free consultations because that is a fancy word for “get you in and sign you up.”
We promise that we will not try to sell you our services. Instead, we will equip you with information that you don’t have and that you need to combat the insurance companies.
If you are an attorney who is interested in referring cases to us, we only do injury law. That means we have no interest in stealing your business client, your estate planning client, or your family law client. Instead, we will work with you and keep you in the loop with the status of your client’s case.
To learn more about our referral program, click here.
