If your child was injured during labor or at birth, the law firm your family chooses to represent you can shape the rest of your child’s life.
A birth injury case is not a quick claim. It can take years and depends on whether your lawyer is ready, willing, and able to go to trial, to actually stand before a jury and get justice for your child when a fair, reasonable, and just settlement is not being offered.
At Beam Legal Team, we hold sacred your right to trial by jury. However, there are law firms that talk that talk, but won’t walk that walk into a courtroom to fight for malpractice victims. Instead, as soon as a medical malpractice insurance company dangles enough money, they are satisfied.
Orlando, Florida-based firm Morgan & Morgan spends hundreds of millions of dollars or more to advertise their personal injury practice. It is a gigantic operation with law offices in all fifty states.
You may have seen its billboards or commercials. But just how devoted is the firm to its own clients’ right to a trial by jury? One clue is that Morgan & Morgan has used arbitration agreements against its own clients to stop their own clients from suing Morgan & Morgan in court.
True American trial lawyers despise arbitration agreements, but corporations and insurance companies cherish them. These agreements take away a victim’s right to trial by jury. That can even include when a client has a good faith basis to sue their lawyer for legal malpractice.
Morgan & Morgan has invoked mandatory-arbitration provisions in its own client agreements to require former clients’ legal-malpractice and fiduciary-duty claims against them to be resolved outside court. (Published decisions: Ramkelawan v. Morgan & Morgan in Florida, Walker v. Morgan & Morgan Jacksonville in federal court in Georgia, and the Brown litigation in Georgia.)
It’s real trial results, not advertisements, that matter when you select a birth injury attorney for your family. Here’s what actually sets lawyers and law firms apart, and what to look for before you sign anything.
Why the Lawyer You Choose Matters More Than You Think
Birth injury and obstetric malpractice cases are among the most complex in personal injury law. They rely on detailed medical records, testimony from qualified medical professionals, and often years of investigation and litigation before a family sees a result. In many states, a case cannot even be filed until a medical professional signs a sworn statement that the claim has merit.
These cases demand resources that most firms are unwilling or unable to commit to. A firm must be willing to hire medical professionals to review the care, fund years of depositions, including travel, mock jury trials, and to truly prepare for trial. Some firms are built for that. Others simply settle quickly and move on to the next case.
Additionally, these cases require experience that most firms do not have. While many firms advertise as trial law firms, it is important to ask how many birth injury cases a lawyer has actually taken to trial. At Beam Legal Team, Matt Patterson and our team have tried, and won, some of the largest and most difficult birth injury cases in the country, and we are proud of our actual record representing seriously injured children.
Settling Fast vs. Fighting to Trial
For a birth injury that will require a lifetime of care, accepting an early or easy settlement offer can leave a family with far less than their child needs. At Beam Legal Team, we settle many of our cases.
However, there is a big difference between settling a case before trial when the settlement offer is fair and reasonable and quite another when the settlement offer is neither. Even multi-million dollar offers that are unfair and unreasonable and will not provide for the child should be rejected, and the case should go to court.
Some large, high-volume firms prioritize speed. They take on enormous caseloads and resolve claims quickly, and often for less money than a case may actually be worth. That’s because quick settlements keep their case pipelines moving.
Morgan & Morgan, one of the largest personal injury firms in the country, offers a cautionary example of this. Former clients have taken the firm to court for legal malpractice over the handling of their cases, and those disputes are a matter of public record. The point is not about any single firm. It’s about asking whether the firm across the table is prepared to fight for the full value of your case, or to simply close it.
The Arbitration Clause Most Clients Never Notice
Read the retainer agreement before you hire any firm, as some contracts contain an arbitration clause. This clause means that if you ever have a dispute with your own lawyers, you may be barred from taking them to court. Instead, your claim would go to private arbitration, where the process is confidential, and your options are limited.
When former clients sued Morgan & Morgan for malpractice, the firm invoked the arbitration clause in its client agreements to bar their clients from court. A Florida appeals court found the clause enforceable in 2021. A Georgia appeals court reached a similar result in 2024. In both cases, clients who wanted their day in court ran into restrictive language they had signed off on at the very start of their cases.
Ask any firm you are considering a direct question: Does your contract require arbitration if I have a dispute with you? A firm that stands behind its work should have no trouble answering this question.
Beam Legal Team does not have arbitration clauses or agreements in our contingency fee agreements.
What Sets Beam Legal Team Apart
What sets us apart from other law firms is not merely that we find arbitration agreements abhorrent, hypocritical, and antithetical to the core values of great American trial lawyers. More importantly, Beam Legal Team has focused on birth injury and obstetric malpractice since 1983; we have also represented victims of other terrible personal injuries and deaths. Jack Beam was one of the Pro Bono attorneys for the Shoels family in the Columbine Massacre.
However, for more than 40 years, our focus has been on one of the most contested and difficult areas of personal injury law—obstetrical and neonatal malpractice. We have recovered more than a billion dollars in verdicts and settlements for families in obstetrical and neonatal malpractice cases in that specialized area of personal injury practice alone.
Just as important is how those results happen. Beam Legal Team is a firm that tries cases in court when doctors, hospitals, and their insurers are not fair, are arrogant, are ignorant of the law and medicine, or all of the above.
Our verdict record includes results many firms never achieve, including a $55 million obstetrical malpractice verdict and a $31+ million birth injury verdict in a rural community where no plaintiff had won a malpractice case before.
Of course, results in past cases do not guarantee results in future cases, but a record like that reflects how we are willing to take a case all the way when the other side will not offer what a family deserves.
Our founder Jack Beam has also helped lead national conversations on obstetric malpractice, including co-chairing a national forum on the subject. That standing in the field is earned over decades, not bought with billboards or commercials.
Questions to Ask Before You Hire a Birth Injury Firm
A short list of direct questions can tell you a lot about a firm before you commit:
- Do you try cases, or mostly settle? The answer tells you whether the firm is prepared to fight for full value or is just looking for a fast resolution.
- How many birth injury cases have you taken to jury trial? Trial experience in this specific area matters more than a general personal injury track record.
- Does your retainer require arbitration? If a dispute ever arises between you and the firm, you want to know your rights before you sign.
- Who will actually handle my case? At some firms, your case may be passed to staff, and you will rarely talk with your lawyer (and please read what former clients have written about our paralegals).
- What will this cost me? Most birth injury firms work on a contingency fee, meaning you pay nothing unless they recover money for you. Confirm the terms in writing.
Talk to a Firm That’s Ready to Fight for Your Family
When choosing a birth injury firm, don’t look for the biggest name or the finger-pointing ad. Instead, look for a team that understands what your child will need and is willing to go the distance to get it.
Let us fight for the money you deserve. Contact us today for a free consultation.
Results in past cases do not guarantee results in future cases