If you are reading this, you have probably come across online personal injury calculators at some point. If you put in your age, your wages and your injuries, they tell you how much your claim is worth. But are these personal injury calculators accurate?

Unfortunately, personal injury calculators are completely useless. They are nothing more than a gimmick used by some personal injury law firms to try and get you in the door. Unfortunately, nothing binds the law firms which are advertising their online personal injury calculators to the figures that those calculators spit out.  

Four reasons why personal injury calculators are wholly unreliable

Firstly, personal injury calculators don’t factor in a hugely important question: will you even win your claim? Just because someone suffered serious injuries does not mean that the defendant must pay compensation. If the defendant has a valid defence, they don’t have to pay anything.

For example, if you slip and fall on ice cream in a shopping centre, does that mean the shopping centre must necessarily pay you? The shopping centre will argue that they have contracted competent cleaners and they were supposed to walk around every 30 minutes and clean the floor. Is this a strong enough argument? A personal injury calculator won’t tell you, but your whole claim depends on it.

The reality is, if a defendant has a strong enough defence, they won’t pay 100% of your claim even if you have serious injuries. A personal injury calculator will just raise unrealistic expectations only for you to be disappointed later.

Secondly, what about legal costs? Some Queensland personal injury firms take 50% of your settlement. (We don’t.) What’s the point in giving you a compensation estimate of say $100,000, if your lawyers end up taking $50,000?

Thirdly, each person and each claim is different. A 45-year-old who can’t go back to work will get much more than someone of the same age and same type of injury who is able to go back to work.

Fourthly, pre-existing conditions can make a big difference. Particularly with orthopaedic injuries (spinal, knee and so on) there is often a pre-existing condition, even if it was not painful before. How much less will you get because of this? It depends on how good your lawyers are, and not on what the personal injury calculator says.

The list goes on but you get the picture. Personal injury calculators don’t even give you a reliable ballpark.

Where to from here

If you want to get sound legal advice about your injury claim and how much your claim may be worth, get in touch with us on (07) 3063 2268 or email info@deneslawyers.com.au and we will be happy to help.

We offer a free consultation with Oszkar Denes, our principal solicitor who has significant experience in acting for plaintiffs. Before that, he used to represent insurance companies so he knows their tactics.