Boat accident lawyer (maritime attorney) is a legal professional who handles issues and risks related to boating injuries during both commercial and recreational use of vessels.
This article is design both for (1) clients looking to understand what maritime attorneys do and how they can help, and (2) current and future boat accident lawyers researching the US states and cities where their services are in high demand.
Boating Accidents
While boating is indisputably fun, it comes with a risk of accidents that can be severe or fatal. Life-altering injuries can be financially draining. Considering there is a lot at stake, retaining a boat accident attorney is crucial when pursuing compensation for the damages suffered.
The boating industry recorded between 4062 and 6419 accidents each year since 2001. Approximately, 560-767 people lost their lives from these accidents, with 2511-4274 sustaining injuries.
Coast Guard establishes that most boat accidents occur due to:
- Operator inattention
- Inexperienced operators
- Speeding
- Lack of proper lookout leading to collisions
- Lack of proper equipment maintenance
- Operating vessels while impaired
- Ignoring some navigational rules
- Hitting a wave
- Hazardous water conditions
- Extreme weather conditions
Many of these causes carry elements of negligence. If you are hurt or a close family member has died in a boat accident, you will want to explore your compensation options. However, establishing negligence to build a claim for this purpose is typically complicated. It almost always pays off to have a boat accident lawyer by your side.
How Will a Boat Accident Attorney Help You
A maritime lawyer who has been handling boat accident cases for years would probably understand the ins and outs of your situation. The attorney can determine if your case stands a chance and explore the applicable laws, statutes, and theories to develop an appropriate strategy.
The lawyer will tell you the documents and information you need to provide to pursue a boat accident compensation claim.
An attorney will conduct an extensive investigation, evaluating different sources of evidence, including witnesses. They can request critical documents to back up your claim – medical reports, incident reports, law enforcement reports, etc.
Your legal representative will communicate with insurance adjusters and opposing counsel, thus streamlining the process. You will always be updated on any development.
As much as 97% of settlements are reached without going to court. Sometimes, however, a trial is unavoidable. And even if you get to that point, it’s your maritime attorney who will be there to fight for your rights.
Types of Compensation Awarded in a Boat Accident Injury Claim
Your attorney will look into the special or general compensatory damages applicable to your case.
When we say special damages, we mean money that can be awarded to cover expenses or income lost for suffering the injury. For example, when involved in a boat accident, a patient may need treatment and round-the-clock care after leaving hospital. Part of your compensation will include the cost of your past and future medical care.
When recovering from severe injuries, working would be the last thing on your mind. It is possible not to report to work for a long time. Or you may lose the ability to work. That would mean lost earnings and/or lost earning capacity.
As for the general damages, you may receive compensation for non-money losses, including pain and suffering and loss of consortium.
If a loved one lost their life in the accident, you could proceed with a wrongful death claim. The lawyer will take into account medical expenses before death, funeral expenses, emotional distress, loss of companionship, and loss of financial support.
Do You Need A Boat Accident Lawyer If Insurance Companies Are Ready To Settle?
You may need money to cover your medical expenses or support yourself or family members in one way or another. If the insurance of the at-fault party makes a settlement offer, accepting it may seem the most convenient solution. Besides, that would mean not paying boat accident attorney fees.
The truth is, you are likely to end up regretting your decision. While you may not realize it, you will probably get far less than fair compensation.
It is not uncommon for insurance adjusters to rush you into accepting their offer even before your health condition improves. Unfortunately, some injuries could be worse than initially thought. You may require expensive future medical expenses and long-term care.
The at fault-party wouldn’t be liable for these expenses – if, after signing the insurance documents, you discover you need additional treatment or supplementary therapies.
Dealing directly with insurance adjusters is risky because you could commit mistakes that devalue or jeopardize your claim.
While attorney services come at a fee, they should help you save more. Your maritime attorney will assess the extent of your losses or damages and ensure you are not cheated out of deserved compensation.
The Demand for Maritime Attorneys in the US
If you are looking for a career in maritime law, or already are a boating accident attorney wondering where in the US your skills are in demand, see the following chart from Google Trends highlighting the states with the most searches for the term maritime attorney (the darker the color, the more searches):
Unsurprisingly, these are waterfront states with Florida taking the lead in May, 2022, followed by South Carolina, New York, Georgia and North Carolina. Note that this chart is interactive, so if you view it at a later date the results will be updated accordingly.
And this is how relative interest for the search term boat accident lawyer compares between 4/8/2018 and 5/8/2022:
The scale is relative, meaning that 100 is the maximum interest for the selected time frame. As you see, searches for boat accident lawyer grew lot more popular since May 2020 (~2-4 times) and remain relatively high still. Theoretically, this could have to do with more people moving to Florida and the other Southern states since the beginning of covid; if you have other ideas how to explain this, please share them in the comments!
Maritime Lawyers by City
Disclaimer: the author of this article is trained not in maritime law but digital marketing, so this study is based exclusively on the data provided by search engine tools such as Google Trends and Ahrefs.
We’ll start with two premises:
- If a city has more Google maritime law queries, there is more legal practice related to maritime law in that city, and
- If the average cost-per-click on Google for a specific maritime attorney-related query is higher, there is more competition for boating accident clients, which could indicate potentially higher earnings for maritime attorneys practicing in those cities.
The first premise is logical: the more people search for boating accident attorneys in a geo area, the more demand for such practices we should expect in that area. The second premise, while appearing more difficult on the surface, is also simple. There is no point bidding hundreds of dollars on a single paid click for a keyword that isn’t likely to drive positive ROI, so if we find most expensive maritime/boating accident lawyers/attorneys paid search queries that mention particular cities, it is likely that maritime attorneys’ fees in those cities are also higher. Although, naturally, there’s no way to know it for sure unless we directly compare how much boat accident attorneys charge in those cities, so take these findings with a grain of salt and consider them as a starting point for your further investigations, not as the final verdict.
With that in mind, according to a popular search tool Ahrefs, the most expensive geographic areas for maritime attorneys as of May 2022 are: Houston ($1,090 per paid click), New Orleans ($650), Florida ($305), New York ($180)
Maritime attorney CPCs by Ahrefs, May 2022
Keep in mind that these numbers are estimates, and sometimes they can be quite inaccurate (note the $4 CPC for maritime attorney miami, which is suspiciously low, and N/As for some of the bottom search terms). For example, cost-per-click depends on the so-called Quality Score, so the whopping $1,090 for houston maritime attorney is made of clicks that are both considerably cheaper and more expensive. Also, search volumes tend to fluctuate with time, so the relative popularity of boat accident lawyer queries we have seen could go down in the future.
Houston
Houston does stand out, though, because, unlike virtually all the other city-based queries, it has by far the largest search volume (~450 monthly searches), meaning that the CPC data for it should be more reliable (it’s easier for Ahrefs to make estimates based on more statistically significant sample sizes).
It is hard to guess why Houston maritime attorneys are in such high demand, but for those looking to advance their legal career in fields related to boat accidents it can be a good starting point for further investigation. And, if you already know what drives this search anomaly, or will find it out in the future, please let us know in the comments!