Attending trial together with your personal injury lawyer should be the most traumatic experience for the plaintiff.
As soon as your case (in the position of a plaintiff) is ready, it should be set down for hearing.
A well prepared personal injury lawyer arrives earlier then both the plaintiff and the counsel.
Make sure that all the witnesses now where to come and that your personal injury lawyer is available to marshal them when they do arrive, instead of being secreted in a conference room with the counsel.
If you need a long pre-trial conference, either ask someone to accompany you to assemble the witnesses or keep checking that the witnesses have arrived and are well taken care of.
Usually, the plaintiffs are often keen on pointing out possible lines of cross-examination while evidence is being given.
The personal injury lawyer will have to take a stand as to whether the point is a valid one and decide whether he should have a word with the counsel.
If you feel that yourlawyer is not going to pass the point on to the counsel, you should ask him why.
Do not be intimidated and pressurized by the atmosphere of the courtroom into neglecting your responsibilities.
At the end of the case, ensure that yourlawyer let you know exactly what the result is, and provided that the case was successful, what you are going to get by way of damages.
If you should have been unlucky enough to lose at trial, you should sit down as soon as possible together with the personal injury lawyer and counsel to conduct a brief post-mortem, and to decide whether there is really any prospect of a successful appeal.
The decision need not, and indeed should not, be crystallized there and then.
A pause for reflection over a few days will obviously be necessary for your lawyer to analyze with the counsel whether an appeal is likely to stand any chance of success.
One caveat is not to consider your options for so long as to miss the strict time limits for appeals imposed by the law.