Hired an attorney after my crash but they seem completely disorganized — is this normal?

Ugh, this took me right back to my own experience. I had an attorney who kept losing track of my medical records and I spent more time chasing them than recovering. The thing that finally helped me was demanding a single point of contact at the firm — like one paralegal I could email directly. It didn't fix everything but it cut the confusion in half. You're not being unreasonable at all.

The representation letter thing is actually a bigger deal than it sounds. Until that goes out to all parties in writing, the insurance companies are technically within their rights to contact you directly — they may not even know you have counsel yet. That should have gone out within the first week, honestly. On the medical bills, your attorney should have given you a simple instruction: forward everything to them, don't pay anything, don't ignore anything. If they haven't told you that yet, tell them you need a written protocol for handling bills immediately. Switching firms is definitely possible — you'd typically sign a substitution of attorney form — but give them one more chance to get organized first if you otherwise trust them.

Be really careful about those direct calls from the other side's adjuster. Even if it's just a 'routine check-in,' anything you say can and will be used to lowball your claim later. Don't answer questions, don't speculate about your injuries, just say 'all communication goes through my attorney' and hang up. Even if your attorney dropped the ball on the letter, you protect yourself by saying nothing.

Not legal advice, but what you're describing — late representation letters, lost documents, no bill-handling guidance — are legitimate operational failures, not just minor hiccups. A PI firm should run like a system, especially in the first 30 days. You have every right to request a written status update and a clear outline of next steps. If you don't get a satisfactory response within a few days of asking, consulting with a second attorney for a case review is completely reasonable. Most will do it for free.

When I worked on the insurance side, we could always tell when a plaintiff's attorney was disorganized — the file just sat in a weird limbo and honestly it sometimes worked in our favor because nothing moved. I'm not saying your attorney is tanking your case on purpose, but slow and sloppy representation does create opportunities for the other side to drag things out or build a narrative that you're not serious about your claim. Push hard for that written communication. Paper trails matter.

You're already dealing with recovering from a crash and now you have to babysit the people you hired to help you? That's exhausting and so unfair. Please don't let them make you feel like you're the problem for wanting basic communication. You deserve to know what's happening with your own case.

I don't want to be dismissive because some of this does sound frustrating, but I'm curious — is this a solo attorney or a larger firm with multiple staff? And did you get a clear explanation of your case timeline during intake? Sometimes what feels like disorganization is actually just the normal slow pace of early-stage PI work and communication gaps between attorneys and their support staff. Not defending them if they're genuinely dropping balls, just wondering if there's more context here.