Get to Know Negretti & Associates, Part One: Our Three Core Values
In his Legal Beagle podcast, Jonathan Negretti talks about the three core beliefs of Negretti & Associates: No Pressure, Honest Evaluations, and Giving Back. Watch now to get the true meaning behind these words.
This is the first in a series of articles designed to help new and prospective clients become acquainted with Negretti & Associates. We offer this “peek behind the curtain” to showcase the inner workings of our firm — who we are, how we work, and what we believe in. Other articles in this series explore our staff’s unique personalities and talents; the types of cases that we handle and the states in which we practice law; and how we charge for representation and what our tagline “Simplifying Personal Injury” means.
By Jonathan Negretti
At Negretti & Associates, there are three tenets, or beliefs, that we stand for each and every day — 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. These are: No Pressure, Honest Evaluations, and Giving Back. Collectively, these are our core values.
No Pressure
When I started to do more personal injury work, I quickly realized how highly competitive this area of law can be. There are a lot of law firms. You hear them on TV. You see them on billboards, light-rail trains, and buses. There are a lot of people out there doing this work, and a lot of them are very good attorneys. The fact that they advertise or market their services takes nothing away from them or their work. However, because there are so many people doing this work, the search for new cases is highly competitive. It has also become high-pressure. Clients are encouraged to sign immediately with the first law firm they talk to. This didn’t feel right to me.
If I were injured and looking for representation, I’d want someone to talk to me like a human being. I’d want to have a conversation, and I’d want to feel like I have the opportunity to reflect upon what was said, talk to my loved ones, and then decide what’s best for me. I wouldn’t want to be put in a situation where I’d feel pressured — like a customer at a used car lot, where if I didn’t buy the car now, it would soon be gone. That’s just not the way that the legal profession works, and it’s definitely not the way that I think personal injury law should work.
For this reason, at Negretti & Associates we have a no-pressure environment. If you’d like to talk to us about your case? Great! And if you’d want advice? Awesome! We’re happy to help!
When you talk with us, you won’t be pressured into signing with us. We’ll tell you about what we charge. (We explain this on our website, too, and we’ll talk about that in a future podcast and blog post. Talking about fees is kind of a taboo in our profession.) We’ll share with you our thoughts about your particular situation, and then we’ll tell you to take time to think about our conversation.
If you want to hire us because you think we’re the right folks to be representing you, then great. We want this to be a marriage, in a way — a partnership where you’re just as committed to what we’re doing as we are to what you’re doing. That’s the only way this works.
So, no pressure!
Honest Evaluations
If Negretti & Associates can’t benefit your situation, then we don’t want to steer you in the wrong direction. There are many law firms that will take cases regardless of client fit, and the law firm will be the only party to benefit in the case. In such instances, the client won’t receive anything. But that’s never stated up front, or even discussed. Many law firms will gobble up a bunch of cases, to the detriment of the clients they represent.
We don’t do that. When we look at a case, we’ll tell you, in all honestly, whether we think there’s something that we can do. We’ll see if we can help you — and we’ll want to help you.
We handle a wide variety of personal injury claims. Personal injury is a big category of cases, spanning dog bites, automobile accidents, product liability (for example, airbags and fuel tanks that explode), medical malpractice, diminished value claims, electric scooter accidents, slips and falls, and more. We take on all of these types of cases. But, in order to perform well, we need to be honest with every client that we represent. We don’t take cases where we don’t think that we can benefit people.
We try to be a resource. We share lots of information with people. In the event that we can’t help prospective clients, we at least equip them with information they can take and move forward.
We don’t reject cases because of size. We don’t turn down clients because their case isn’t worth enough to us. We say, “Look, if we can’t provide a benefit to, and you can’t see a benefit, then there’s no reason you should be hiring us.” Honesty is the best policy.
Giving Back
Negretti & Associates has a charitable arm, called Negretti & Associates Making a Difference. Every year, we donate thousands of dollars to charities, both local and national. We partner with a different charity every quarter.
It’s really important to us as a firm to support these charities and do more than just write a check. While the money that we offer to these charities is incredibly important to them, so is the tangible work that we do. For example, we’ve had a partnership with a food bank, where we provided in-person volunteer work — filling bags of food, which we also delivered.
When a case reaches a conclusion, we offer our client the option to donate a certain portion of the settlement proceeds to the charity that we’ve partnered with during that particular quarter. When the client chooses to do give, we match the donation 100 percent.
After all, if the client is willing to forego some of the money that really was secured to make them whole — to put them back in the position they were before the personal injury — then we feel it’s only right that we match that. We’ll take some of the fees that we receive as the law firm and give those back to a charity.
While I do a lot of philanthropic work on my own, the Giving Back aspect of Negretti & Associates has been very important to us from the beginning. Over time, our charity mission has exploded. It continues to evolve and become even better each and every day.
If you have questions about your personal injury case, give Negretti & Associates a call. We’ll talk through your questions and make sure you walk away fully informed. For a free consultation with our legal team, contact us online, call us at 1-833-827-3535, or send us a text.
