How long does a personal injury case take?

The honest answer: it depends on your body

Clients expect the delay to be legal. Mostly it is medical.

A case cannot be valued until the medical picture is stable, because until then nobody knows what is being valued. If you finish treatment in three months, the case can move. If you are still in physical therapy at month nine, waiting is not a lawyer being slow. It is a lawyer refusing to sell your case cheap before anyone knows what it is worth.

What sets the pace, stage by stage

• Treatment. Runs as long as your recovery runs. This is usually the longest single stretch and the one that matters most.
• Records and bills. Providers are slow to produce them, and a case cannot be demanded without them. Chasing records is unglamorous work that decides the timeline.
• The demand and negotiation. The insurer takes time to respond, then counters low, then moves. Many cases end here.
• Filing suit. If the offer is not reasonable, filing restarts the clock on a longer track and adds court schedules to the equation.
• Discovery, mediation, trial. Each adds real time, and each also adds pressure that often produces a settlement.

The nine stages are laid out in detail on the how a case works page.

What makes a case take longer

• Ongoing or escalating treatment, especially anything surgical
• Disputed fault, which turns a negotiation into an investigation
• Multiple defendants or multiple insurers pointing at each other
• Thin coverage that has to be searched for in other policies
• Medical liens that have to be negotiated before anything is disbursed
• Court congestion, once a case is filed

What makes it faster

• Consistent treatment with no gaps
• Clear liability, ideally with a police report and independent witnesses
• Getting a lawyer involved early, before evidence disappears
• Answering your lawyer's calls, and returning paperwork quickly

That last one is not filler. A case genuinely moves at the speed of its slowest participant, and sometimes that is the client.

Fast is not the goal

The fastest possible resolution is to take the first offer next week. That is also usually the worst one available.

What Boyd will do is tell you where the case is, what it is waiting on, and why — so the wait is something you understand rather than something you endure.