The first time I drafted a demand letter, I overdid it. Twenty-three pages, every medical note appended, four photos of mangled bumpers, and a closing number that made even my client swallow hard. The adjuster called me the next day: “Appreciate the detail,” she said, “but what’s your theory?” I had buried the lead. That stuck with me. A winning demand letter doesn’t try to be everything. It aims to be undeniable.
When people picture a Car Accident Lawyer or any Injury Lawyer at work, they often see courtroom drama. More often, the fight happens on paper, at a desk with two monitors and a legal pad, building a narrative that an insurer can’t ignore and a jury would likely reward. Below is how a seasoned accident lawyer actually prepares demand letters that move cases, not just ink.
What a Demand Letter Really Does
A demand letter is a strategic brief, a pre-litigation story with evidence under it. It serves three functions. It tells the adjuster what happened and why their insured is at fault. It translates injuries into dollars in a way that feels fair and credible. And it sets the table for the next move: settlement or suit.
The adjuster reading your letter has a claim file with holes. Your job is to fill those holes with reliable facts and make the cost of denial feel higher than the cost of writing a check. You are not writing for a judge. You are writing for a professional skeptic who reads hundreds of letters a year and knows the value of a case within about 10 percent from the first two paragraphs. Get those right, and you’re halfway there.
Building the Facts Before You Write a Word
The worst time to look for a missing record is after you hit send. I won’t draft the first sentence until I’m sure the file is tight. That usually means tracking down at least six categories of proof, often in a staggered order as the medical picture evolves.
First, liability. Police reports are a start, not the finish. If liability is contested, I pull the 911 calls, scene photos from responding officers, and traffic camera footage if we can get it. In a left-turn crash one spring, the report favored the other driver. We located a landscaping crew that worked the corner every Tuesday. Two workers saw the light cycle. One had dashcam video that captured the turn arrow. That 26 seconds of footage turned a 60–40 fight into a clean liability case.
Second, contemporaneous medical documentation. Emergency department records matter less for diagnosis than for documenting onset. Insurers love gaps. If your client waited ten days to seek care, you now have a causation problem that must be addressed head-on, not buried in a footnote. I also collect imaging reports, specialist notes, and a list of medications with dosages. When there is a concussion or post-concussive syndrome, I want neuropsychological testing or at least a treating provider’s detailed notes on cognitive symptoms.
Third, wage and work impact. Pay stubs, a letter from the employer, a job description, and, where relevant, a doctor’s work restrictions. Self-employed clients need profit and loss statements. If a hair stylist loses the use of her dominant hand for eight weeks, the math is different from a salaried office worker who can type one-handed. A strong demand letter translates those differences into numbers without melodrama.
Fourth, property damage and repair documentation. Adjusters notice when the damage profile matches the claimed injuries. A low-speed tap can cause real injuries, but if that’s the case you need medical specifics that explain the mechanism, such as preexisting degenerative changes aggravated by the new trauma. Be honest about this. Juries reward candor, and adjusters predict juries.
Fifth, prior medicals and prior claims. If a client had a shoulder tear repaired three years ago, say so and explain the baseline after recovery. When you acknowledge history, you take away the defense’s thunder. I ask for five years of prior relevant records, longer if the issue is complex.
Sixth, the insurance landscape. I confirm policy limits early through a proper disclosure request, track down all potentially applicable coverages, and run a UIM/UM analysis. If there is an MVA with two defendants, I’ll map out the sequence of tenders. And I check for liens: health insurers, ERISA plans, Medicare, Medicaid, workers’ compensation. You cannot negotiate credibly without knowing who will be paid from the settlement.
Only after this groundwork do I draft. It keeps the letter lean and persuasive, and it prevents the classic trap where the adjuster asks for five things you should have anticipated.
Finding the Story: Fault, Harm, and Why It Matters
Facts alone don’t persuade. They need context, a cause-and-effect arc that connects the crash to the losses in a way an ordinary person believes.
I start each letter with the story in three beats. What the defendant did or failed to do, the injuries that followed, and the specific ways those injuries changed my client’s life. If I need two pages to cover those, I am doing it wrong. A good adjuster will decide the reserve and the opening offer before reading the attachments. Lead with the strongest facts and the cleanest language.
In a winter rear-end collision on black ice, for example, the driver behind traveled too fast for conditions and never touched the brakes before impact. My client felt a pop in his neck, finished the drive home, woke up with numb fingers, and went to the ER the next morning. MRI showed C5–6 disc protrusion contacting the thecal sac, conservative care failed, and he underwent a microdiscectomy. He missed seven weeks from his job at the distribution center and lost his overtime. He can lift again, but he avoids weekend basketball because a fall might set him back. The mechanics are ordinary, which is precisely why they persuade.
Tone matters. Adjusters see puffery coming a mile away. I keep adjectives to a minimum. If a scar is six centimeters across the knee and keloided, let the photo do most of the talking. If pain interferes with sleep, include the pain management note and the changes in medication. Specific beats general every time.
Liability: Make It Simple and Undisputed, or Win the Dispute on Paper
Liability sections can be a paragraph or five pages depending on whether fault is obvious. In clear cases, brevity helps. Quote the statute or traffic rule that applies. If the police cited the other driver for failure to yield, say so and attach the citation. Include any admission against interest recorded in the body cam or at the scene. I once had a case where the defendant told the 911 operator, “I looked down for a second and just plowed him.” That line did more than any diagram.
When liability is disputed, resist the urge to litigate inside the letter. Present the evidence in an order that forces the conclusion you want. Start with the physical facts that cannot be argued, like skid measurements, vehicle resting positions, and damage patterns. Then add the human observations, and finally your expert opinions if you have them. If there is a split among witnesses, explain why your witnesses are more credible. The landscaper who works the corner every Tuesday and describes the timing sequence carries more weight than a passerby who saw the aftermath.
Comparative fault is not fatal. A straightforward acknowledgment often unlocks value. “We recognize the possibility a jury could assign up to 20 percent fault to Mr. Lopez for entering the intersection late. Even after that allocation, the special damages and the surgical intervention support a settlement well above policy limits.” That kind of sentence signals realism, which helps you later if you need to argue for bad faith on a policy limits tender.
Medicals: Connect the Dots Without Drowning the Reader
Insurers fear two things: causation gaps and outlier bills. Address both.
Start with the timeline of treatment, not in bulleted chronology but in a tight narrative that links events. On day one, your client reported neck pain, headaches, and right-arm tingling. On day nine, primary care referred to orthopedics. On day 24, MRI showed a disc protrusion at the level correlating to the radicular symptoms. Conservative care lasted 10 weeks and included PT twice a week, gabapentin, and a steroid taper. The epidural injection helped temporarily, then symptoms returned. Surgery occurred at week 16, and the patient improved, with residual numbness in the index finger. That is the skeleton of a causation story.
Be careful with chiropractic bills that dwarf medical costs. If the chiro care was extensive but helpful, say so and include functional Visit this page gains from the notes. If the care looks like a mill, calibrate your ask accordingly or be ready to defend it with testimony about pain relief and restored activity. When an adjuster sees $11,000 in chiropractic notes with identical SOAP entries and little objective change, they discount. If you want that value back, you need more than invoices.
With soft tissue cases, detail matters because the injuries are less visible. Document sleep disruption, missed family events, changing childcare roles. But ground those facts in records where possible. A line in a physical therapy note that says, “Patient reports waking three times nightly due to cervical pain; average 5 hours sleep; difficulty concentrating at work,” carries more weight than a generic pain score.
For permanency, use impairment ratings sparingly and only when credible. A 5 percent whole-person impairment from a treating orthopedist is worth more than a 12 percent from a hired IME who saw the client once. Adjusters know the difference.
Money: From Bills to Value, and Why the Number at the End Matters
There is an art to converting treatment into a settlement figure. Some lawyers multiply medicals by two or three and call it a day. That approach misses context. A $30,000 case with $10,000 in bills can be fair if the client healed in three months and went back to normal life. The same bills with permanent loss of function should settle higher.
I build the number in layers. Start with specials: medical bills after reasonable reductions, lost wages including overtime or missed contracts, and future medicals if supported by a provider’s opinion. Then translate non-economic losses into a range that reflects the lived experience. Jurors tend to anchor pain and suffering to something concrete, so give them hooks: surgery, missed holidays, abandoned hobbies, sleep deprivation, a limit on lifting your grandchild.
The demand number at the end should be aggressive but defensible. If policy limits are low and the harms are severe, I will demand the limits and say why, including specific language regarding Stowers or bad faith exposure depending on jurisdiction. If the limits are adequate, I pick a number that leaves room to negotiate yet signals the settlement zone. Most adjusters will come back at 10 to 30 percent of your opening. If you want to end near $180,000, you probably need to open north of $350,000, assuming the case supports it. But do not throw a half-million-dollar demand at a case with $8,000 in treatment and a healed sprain. You lose credibility, and the next letter from you goes to the bottom of the stack.
Writing the Letter So It Gets Read
The best demand letter feels like a good magazine feature, not a term paper. It respects the reader’s time. It avoids legalese. And it anticipates objections without sounding defensive.
I keep headings sparing and descriptive: Background, Liability, Injuries and Treatment, Economic Losses, Future Care, Non-Economic Damages, Insurance and Liens, Demand. Under each, I write in clear prose, six to twelve sentences per paragraph. I quote records selectively and with pinpoint cites. If a sentence is doing two jobs, I split it. The result should be something an adjuster can skim in five minutes and still understand the case.
If you can include one or two photographs that carry emotional truth without theatrics, do it. Before-and-after images work better than close-ups of bruises. A client coaching his daughter’s soccer team before the crash and watching from a folding chair after the crash tells a story without a single adjective.
I avoid footnotes. I avoid parentheticals that look like law review (“see attached Ex. D-14”). If I have to include a complex medical concept, I translate it. “The C5–6 disc is bulging and pressing on the nerve that runs to the right arm, which explains the tingling in the index finger.” Adjusters are human. Plain English wins.
Anticipating Defense Themes and Spiking Them Early
If the crash was low property damage, say it and explain the biomechanical reality. If there was a gap in treatment, contextualize it: childcare duties, loss of insurance, initial belief the pain would resolve, then worsening. If your client has prior similar complaints, define the baseline. I’ve had cases where a client had intermittent back pain for years, then after a collision needed a fusion. The surgeon’s note describing the change in MRI findings and Car Accident the increase in symptoms made the difference. Use it.
Social media can hurt you. I ask clients, from the first meeting, to stop posting about physical activities or travel until the case resolves. If an Instagram photo shows a client hiking the week after a crash, you must address it or expect the defense to do it for you. Sometimes the photo looks worse than it was: a flat, half-mile walk on a trail for mental health, not a summit. If you provide context up front, you defuse the sting.
Liens, Subrogation, and Why Net Recovery Drives Strategy
A settlement number only matters if it turns into a fair net for your client. That means tackling liens and write-offs in the letter itself. If there are health insurance liens, I include the plan type. An ERISA plan with discretionary language has more leverage than a state-regulated PPO, but both can be negotiated. Medicare requires compliance with conditional payments and future interests when there is ongoing care. Medicaid often reduces under hardship rules. Workers’ compensation carriers have statutory rights with exceptions and credits. These are not footnotes to a case; they shape the bottom line.
I sometimes include a short paragraph in the demand noting expected lien reductions and how that affects the settlement proposal. It signals that we are serious about closing and that we have done the math. An adjuster will factor that into authority requests.
When and How to Use Experts Pre-Suit
Not every demand letter needs an expert report. In many mid-level cases, the records speak for themselves. But when liability is complex or causation is fragile, a well-chosen expert can secure value before filing.
In a disputed T-bone at a rural intersection with sightline issues, we hired an accident reconstructionist to analyze yaw marks and daylight photographs. His two-page letter with scale diagrams did more than ten pages of argument would have. In a mild traumatic brain injury case where early imaging was normal, a neurologist’s narrative tying symptoms to the mechanism and time course brought the adjuster to the table. Keep it short and specific. No one wants to read a 40-page CV.
Negotiation Strategy Starts in the Demand
The demand letter is your first offer. It also sets your tone. If I intend to negotiate promptly, I give a reasonable time window for response, usually 20 to 30 days, and invite a call if the adjuster needs anything specific. If I am pressing for a policy limits tender due to catastrophic harm, I send the letter certified and by email, outline the basis for exposure, and make it easy for the carrier to do the right thing. In some jurisdictions, I reference the statute or case law that defines their duty to settle within limits when liability is clear and damages exceed those limits.
Then I wait. If I do not hear by the deadline, I follow up once, briefly. Silence can be strategic, but so can escalation. I have filed suit the day after a missed tender deadline when the risk calculus favored it. Other times, I have granted a short extension because the adjuster needed supervisor approval and showed good faith. Relationships matter in this business, as long as you never trade leverage for likability.
Two Short Checklists I Actually Use
- Pre-demand essentials: complete medical records and bills, clear liability proof, wage documentation, lien status, policy limits confirmation. Quality control before sending: read aloud for clarity, verify every number, ensure attachments match citations, confirm client approval of facts, confirm delivery method and deadline.
Pitfalls That Sink Otherwise Good Demands
Length is the first. A 40-page letter smells like weakness. You should be able to tell the story in under ten, not counting exhibits. The attachments carry the rest.
Exaggeration is the second. Calling a resolved sprain “life-altering” undermines your credibility when you handle a truly life-altering case. Keep your adjectives proportional to the harm.
Timing is the third. Sending a demand before maximum medical improvement can make sense in low-limit cases where damages already exceed coverage. Otherwise, early demands usually backfire. The adjuster anchors low, and you spend months trying to move them for each new bill.
Sloppy math is the fourth. If your numbers don’t tie, the adjuster will discount across the board. I build a simple damages chart with dates, providers, amounts billed, amounts paid, and balances. I attach it as a single-page exhibit.
Ignoring the audience is the fifth. Some carriers centralize authority and require specific forms or summaries. Ask what they need. You can maintain your narrative and still use their preferred structure. It often speeds up review.
A Short Case Example, With Real Numbers
A delivery driver in his early forties is rear-ended at a light by a distracted teenager. Liability is clear. Client feels neck and low back pain, drives home, goes to urgent care the next morning. X-rays negative, prescribed NSAIDs and muscle relaxer. Over the next three months, he does physical therapy and misses two weeks of work initially, then returns with restrictions, no overtime. MRI shows a small annular tear at L4–5 without nerve compression. No injections. Symptoms improve but don’t resolve. He stops therapy at week 12. He can do his job but reports intermittent pain with heavy lifting and avoids weekend pickup basketball.
Medicals billed: $12,800. Paid after adjustments: $7,950. Lost wages: $2,900 overtime plus $1,600 regular pay for two weeks. Total specials: around $12,450.
Insurer policy limits: $100,000 per person. No UIM involved. No prior back complaints documented in five years. No liens other than a small ERISA plan that will negotiate.
Demand strategy: I open at $95,000 with a 30-day response window, anchored to the non-economic harms but not ignoring the moderate specials. The adjuster counters at $28,000, citing low-impact property damage and resolved soft tissue injury. I respond with a narrowed range and specific anchors: three months of documented therapy, persistent functional limits, overtime loss, and the MRI finding consistent with trauma. We settle at $62,500. After attorney fees and costs, negotiated lien reduction, and bills paid, the client nets a little over $36,000. The key was a clean narrative, fair opening number, and tight math.
Could I have asked for the full $100,000? Sure. Would it have moved the case faster or improved the net? Unlikely. Experience teaches where the gravity is.
When to Push to Litigation
Some cases will not settle at a number you can recommend. The reasons vary. A stubborn adjuster, a carrier policy change, a prior claim that spooks them, a jurisdiction with ugly verdict history. The demand letter is still doing its job. It locks in their evaluation, creates a record of your reasonableness, and frames the issues for suit.
I file when the spread between the last offer and the probable verdict range justifies the risk and cost, considering the client’s tolerance. I also file when policy limits require pressure. In a catastrophic case with clear liability and low limits, a well-drafted limits demand followed by prompt suit can set up bad faith leverage. The demand letter is Exhibit A later. Write it with that in mind.
The Quiet Work That Separates Good From Great
Winning demand letters look effortless. They are not. The craft is invisible: choosing which fact to lead with, which record line to quote, which number to highlight, when to concede a point, when to stand firm. A veteran Accident Lawyer learns to hear the adjuster’s internal monologue while drafting. What will they question? Where will they anchor? How will they explain this to a supervisor?
That empathy, paired with a stubborn commitment to the truth of your client’s experience, is what moves cases. The client rarely sees this part. They judge you by results and bedside manner. But this is the work that creates those results.
If you are hiring a Lawyer after a crash, ask to see a sample demand letter with names redacted. You will learn more about their approach than from a dozen ads. The best letters are clear, grounded, and a little bit relentless. They read like someone who did the homework and knows what the case is worth.
Most of all, they make it easy for the insurer to pay. Not because you yelled the loudest, but because you showed them the truth and what it costs to deny it.