Questions to Ask a Birth Injury Lawyer

Hiring a birth injury attorney is one of the most important decisions a family can make after a child is injured during delivery. Asking the right questions to ask a birth injury attorney before you hire one, including questions that could disqualify any firm, gives you the information you need to make a sound choice. This checklist is designed to help parents evaluate any law firm, including this one.

This article provides general legal information; consult a licensed Illinois attorney for advice specific to your situation.

Who Reviews the Fetal Monitor Strips?

Illinois law requires any attorney who files a medical malpractice complaint to attach a written report from a qualified reviewing health professional stating that the case has merit. This requirement comes from 735 ILCS 5/2-622. But the certificate requirement is a floor, not a ceiling. The more important question is: who specifically reviews the fetal monitoring data before your case is filed?

Fetal heart rate interpretation is a specialized skill. A physician who reviewed general obstetric records is not the same as a perinatal specialist or a maternal-fetal medicine physician who has trained specifically in electronic fetal monitoring. Ask the attorney: Is your reviewing physician board-certified in maternal-fetal medicine or obstetrics? Have they testified in fetal monitoring cases specifically? The answer tells you whether the firm invests in quality expert review or checks the statutory box with a generalist.

Do You Fund Expert Costs?

Birth injury cases require multiple experts: perinatal medicine, neonatology, nursing standards, pediatric neurology, life-care planning, and vocational economics, among others. Expert fees in these cases commonly run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars before trial. Some firms front these costs and recover them at the end of the case. Others require the family to pay as the case proceeds, or they cap what they are willing to spend.

Ask directly: Does your firm advance all litigation costs, including expert fees? What happens to those costs if we lose? Under Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 1.5, the fee agreement must describe how costs are handled. Read that section of the retainer agreement carefully. A firm that is reluctant to fund significant expert costs may not be positioned to take a case to trial against a well-resourced hospital system.

What Is Your Trial Record in Medical Malpractice Specifically?

Many personal injury attorneys settle cases routinely and rarely go to trial. Against major hospital defendants, a firm’s willingness and ability to try a case affects the settlement dynamic from day one. A defendant who knows your attorney does not try cases has less reason to offer full value early in negotiations.

Ask: How many medical malpractice cases have you taken to verdict in the last five years? How many of those were birth injury or obstetric cases specifically? What were the outcomes? You are not looking for a perfect win rate, trials are unpredictable. You are looking for a firm that has been inside a courtroom on these facts, knows how to present fetal monitoring testimony to a jury, and is prepared to go the distance if settlement is not reasonable. Also ask: Have you ever had a medical malpractice case go to a defense verdict, and what did you learn from it? The answer tells you more than a list of wins.

To learn more about whether you can file a birth injury lawsuit in Illinois, review our detailed overview: Can I Sue For A Birth Injury.

How Long Have You Handled Birth Injury Cases?

Birth injury litigation is a subspecialty within medical malpractice. Attorneys who handle a wide variety of personal injury matters, car accidents, slip and falls, premises liability, alongside birth injury cases are not the same as attorneys who have focused on obstetric and neonatal injury for years. The medicine is complex, the expert community is small, and the defendants, hospital systems and physician groups, are experienced at defending these claims.

Ask how many years the firm has handled birth injury cases and what percentage of their current caseload consists of medical malpractice. Also ask whether the attorney who will handle your case personally has this background, or whether it will be referred internally to another attorney you have not met. Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 1.4, requires attorneys to keep clients reasonably informed about the status of their matter and to explain things clearly enough that clients can make informed decisions. Knowing who is actually working on your case is a basic piece of that picture.

Do You Have Access to a Life-Care Planner?

If your child has cerebral palsy, hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, or another permanent condition resulting from a birth injury, the damages in the case include a lifetime of medical care, therapy, assistive technology, home modification, and lost earning capacity. These figures must be presented through a credentialed life-care planner and an economist, experts who can construct a detailed, defensible damages model that survives cross-examination.

Ask whether the firm has worked with life-care planners on prior cases and whether they have a network of pediatric rehabilitation experts. A firm that is new to this type of damages calculation may undervalue the case or struggle to present the evidence effectively at trial or mediation. Understanding how a birth injury lawyer can help your family goes beyond liability, the damages side of the case is equally important and requires its own expertise.

Will the Same Attorney Handle Negotiation and Trial, or Are They Different People?

At some firms, the attorney who signs you up and negotiates a settlement is not the same attorney who would actually try the case if it went to trial. This is not automatically a problem, since larger firms often have dedicated trial counsel, but you should know the structure going in. Ask who specifically would stand up in front of a jury if your case does not settle, whether that person has been involved in your case from the beginning or would be brought in later, and how the firm coordinates the handoff between the attorneys who negotiate and the attorneys who try cases. A vague answer to this question, or the suggestion that “someone” would handle trial without a name attached, is worth following up on.

What Should a Free Consultation Actually Cover?

A useful first consultation goes beyond a sympathetic listening session. By the end of the call or meeting, you should have a reasonably clear sense of: what records the firm will request and from which facilities, roughly how long the initial review typically takes before the firm can tell you whether they believe you have a viable case, what the retainer agreement says about fees and costs, and who your point of contact will be going forward. If a firm cannot describe its own process in concrete terms, that may reflect a firm that has not handled many of these cases, or one that is not being fully transparent about how the case will actually be worked.

Why Timing Matters Even While You Are Still Interviewing Firms

It is reasonable to want to meet with more than one attorney before deciding, but the interview process itself should not be allowed to eat into the time you have to act. Under 735 ILCS 5/13-212, a child’s own birth injury claim generally must be filed within eight years of the negligent act and never after the child’s 22nd birthday, and because a delivery-room injury has a fixed date, the eight-year prong usually controls; a mother’s own claim generally has a shorter two-year discovery period with a four-year outer limit. Every attorney you speak with should be able to tell you, at least roughly, where your family stands on these deadlines during a free consultation, before you sign anything. A firm that cannot or will not answer a basic timing question in the initial conversation is a signal worth noting.

How Will You Communicate With Us, and How Often?

Birth injury cases often take years to resolve, particularly when they proceed toward trial rather than an early settlement. Ask how the firm typically communicates: Will you have a single point of contact, or will you be routed through paralegals and case managers with limited attorney involvement? How often should you expect a substantive update, as opposed to a form letter? Illinois Rule of Professional Conduct 1.4 requires reasonable communication, but “reasonable” varies widely in practice from firm to firm, and it is fair to ask what that looks like concretely before you commit to a multi-year relationship.

How to Verify What an Attorney Tells You

You do not have to take a firm’s self-description at face value. The Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC) maintains a free, searchable public record of every licensed Illinois attorney’s disciplinary history, license status, and years of practice. Before hiring any firm, look up the specific attorney who will handle your case, not just the firm’s name, since a firm’s marketing may feature a founding partner who is not the lawyer actually assigned to your file. It is also reasonable to ask for the names of one or two past birth injury clients willing to speak about their experience, understanding that confidentiality and settlement terms may limit what a firm can share.

What Does “No Fee Unless We Win” Actually Mean?

Nearly every birth injury firm advertises a contingency fee, but the phrase can mean slightly different things depending on how the retainer agreement is written. Ask specifically whether “no fee unless we win” refers only to the attorney’s fee, or whether it also covers case costs such as expert witness fees, court reporter fees, and record-retrieval charges. In many agreements, the contingency structure applies to the fee, but case costs remain the client’s responsibility if the case does not succeed, or are deducted from any recovery before the fee is calculated. Understanding exactly which costs are contingent and which are not, before you sign, avoids a difficult conversation later in the case.

Questions That Should Disqualify Any Firm

There are responses that should give you pause regardless of how impressive a firm’s marketing appears. Be cautious if an attorney:

Promises a specific settlement amount before reviewing the records, no attorney can ethically do this.
Cannot name the type of expert who would review the fetal monitoring data in your case.
Has no trial experience in medical malpractice and makes no mention of it.
Proposes to refer the case to another firm without disclosing this clearly and getting your written consent under Rule 1.5(e).
Cannot explain how costs are handled in the retainer agreement or is vague about who pays if the case does not resolve in your favor.
Pressures you to sign a retainer at the first meeting without giving you time to review the fee agreement.

A reputable firm will welcome these questions. If an attorney is uncomfortable being asked about their trial record or their expert review process, that is information too.

What to Bring to Your First Consultation

Any medical records already in your possession, including discharge paperwork and after-visit summaries
A written timeline, to the best of your recollection, of the labor and delivery and what you were told at each stage
Contact information for every hospital and provider involved, including any transfer to a different facility
A list of your child’s current diagnoses, therapies, and treating physicians
Any correspondence you have already had with the hospital or its representatives about what happened

Frequently Asked Questions

What does “no fee unless we win” mean for case costs specifically, not just attorney fees?
It depends entirely on the specific retainer agreement, which is exactly why this is worth asking directly rather than assuming. Some firms advance all costs and only recover them from a successful outcome; others structure costs differently. Read the costs section of any agreement before signing, and ask the attorney to walk through it in plain language.

Should I be worried if a firm wants to review records before giving me any opinion on my case?
No, that is the correct approach. An attorney who offers a confident opinion on liability before reviewing the fetal monitor strips and delivery record is skipping a step Illinois law itself requires before a case can even be filed.

Is it normal to meet with more than one law firm before deciding?
Yes, and most reputable firms expect it. What matters is that comparing firms does not delay pulling the medical records, since records requests and expert review take time regardless of which firm ultimately handles the case.

Does a bigger firm with a national advertising presence mean better results?
Not necessarily. Advertising budget says nothing about who specifically will handle your case, how many birth injury trials that attorney has personally tried, or how the firm funds expert costs. The questions in this guide apply regardless of firm size.

What if I already signed with a firm and I am having second thoughts?
Clients generally have the right to discharge an attorney and seek new counsel, though the prior firm may be entitled to compensation for work already performed. If you have concerns about how your case is being handled, raising them directly with the firm, or consulting a second attorney for an opinion, is a reasonable next step.

Talk to a Chicago Attorney, Free Consultation

Phillips Law Offices handles birth injury cases for families throughout Illinois. We are glad to answer every question on this list directly. Call us at (312) 346-4262 or visit our contact page to schedule a free, no-obligation consultation. There is no fee unless we recover on your behalf.

Questions to Ask a Birth Injury Lawyer Before You Hire One