Back in November of 2009, the Journal of Occupational and Evironmental Medicine published a study that analyzed costs associated with workers’ compensation claims in Illinois.
The study evaluated 19,734 construction injury claims filed with the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission between 2000 and 2005.
The researchers looked at various factors like weekly wage, attorney representation, severity of injury, age at time of injury, etc.
They found that the number of claims declined between 2000 and 2005, but the median compensation for an injured worker increased.
The study also found that construction workers filing a claim with attorney representation received $1,210 more in compensation than those representing themselves after controlling for all other variables in the analysis.
“Before throwing in measures of severity — which in this study was percent of disability — attorney costs were about $10,000 per worker,” said Lee Friedman, lead author of the study. “Once we controlled for severity of injury, it dropped to $1,200.”
Friedman stated that this finding is contrary to previous beliefs that legal fees have a dramatic impact on the cost of a workers’ compensation claim.
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