This post is the first in a three-part series meant to help you identify who not to hire when you’ve been injured in a car accident, truck wreck, slip and fall.

The first type of attorney you should never hire is the desperate one.

If an attorney you don’t know (or someone from their office) randomly calls you after a motor vehicle accident, they are desperate.

They are not a “go-getter” or “hungry.” They are starving. They are desperate.

Almost every state prohibits attorneys from directly contacting unrepresented people and advertising to represent them.

In Ohio, unless you have a prior personal, professional, or family relationship with a lawyer, they are forbidden from directly contacting you and offering to “take your case.”

The same is true for lawyers in Tennessee.

The same is true for lawyers in Arkansas.

If an attorney is willing to compromise their ethics to get your case, you can bet they are willing to compromise other things as well.

So, what makes these attorneys so desperate for your business? Often, it is because they are underwater. Personal injury law is one of the most expensive advertising spaces in existence. Some firms pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising every month. They’ve created an overhead monster. Now, they must feed it.

Some firms feed the beast by continuing to dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into advertising online, on radio, on television, on billboards, and elsewhere. Other firms, particularly those who are running out of capital, resort to less ethical options.

When I was living and practicing in Memphis, Tennessee, it was well known that some firms would hire people to sit in the Memphis Police Department’s records department. That person would sit and wait for you to come in to retrieve your police report and, as soon as you did, they would approach you and offer to connect you with “an attorney you can trust.”

In Ohio compromised attorneys and their law firms will collect your police report as soon as it is released, find your telephone number, and start calling you incessantly trying to convince you to let them take your case.

Why do they do this? Well, they are desperate. But they aren’t desperate to help you. They are desperate to help themselves. You and your case are just a means to that end. Their goal is to sign you up and settle your case as fast as possible. If it takes too long to get an offer, or if you are unwilling to accept the first offer made, they will drop your case and move on to the next one — especially if your claim is getting close to the statute of limitations.

For these types of firms and attorneys, everything is a numbers game, and they make their money on the margins. They don’t see you as an individual. They see you (and your case) as a number. The more cases they sign and settle, the more money they make.

Despite what their advertising may say, a desperate attorney isn’t ready to “fight for you.” They are ready to sign you up and settle you out. Sometimes, settlement is the right resolution for your case. But even when that’s true, the timing and the amount can vary widely. A desperate attorney will try to get you to compromise on the value of your case by convincing you to settle too soon and for too little.

That’s why the first type of attorney you should never hire is the desperate one.