How Long Does a Lawsuit Take From Start to Finish?

The quickest I have ever gotten a case to trial from the time a lawsuit was originally filed was 4 months, the quickest timeframe in my 21 years of experience. Most cases, from start to finish, take much longer than that. This is so, not just based upon how much time it takes for your lawyer to do all of the things necessary to prepare the case for trial, but also on who the judge is and how large of a trial docket they carry from month to month. Most of the judges in Florida state courts have a trial calendar that is one to four weeks long and will add many cases to the trial docket. At the calendar call, the judge figures out which case will go first and in what order the other cases will go. If it is a two week trial docket and the first two cases take one week each from beginning of jury selection to the jury verdict at the end of the case, the judge will only reach two cases on the docket. If another 40 cases remain on the list and have not been reached, they will all be rolled over to the judge's next trial docket. Some cases can get rolled over from docket to docket, resulting in months going by while waiting for trial. This aspect of civil trial procedure is outside your lawyer's control.

What is within your lawyer's control is the amount of time it takes to get answers to written questions (called interrogatories), and any documents, photographs, witness statements, etc., called requests for production, from the opposing side and to take the depositions of the defendant and any other witnesses in the case as soon as possible.

My law firm actively proceeds forward on all cases that a law suit has been filed on, by promptly hiring the appropriate experts, taking the necessary depositions and doing everything necessary to prepare your case for trial. This will speed up the process as much as possible. I would say my average time from filing suit to trial, over the past 21 years, is no less than one year in Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Monroe, Pasco, Hillsborough and Orange counties and a little quicker in some of the smaller counties in Florida.

For more information please visit us online at http://www.robertgluck.com/ or http://www.robertglucklaw.com/

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