Early in my career, I believed a good negotiator needed to be aggressive above all else. Push hard, respond fast, never let the other side feel comfortable. Years of sitting across from insurance adjusters taught me something different.
The attorneys who win the best outcomes for their clients are rarely the loudest people in the room. They are the ones willing to wait.
Insurance adjusters negotiate for a living. They handle dozens of claims at once and know exactly which pressure points move an attorney toward a lower number: a looming deadline, an anxious client, a case dragged on long enough for everyone to want it resolved. An adjuster who senses urgency on the other side of the table holds a strong incentive to stand firm on a lower offer, since time pressure works in their favor.
Patience removes this leverage.
None of this means every case should move slowly for its own sake. Some clients need a resolution quickly for financial reasons, and I take this need seriously when building a strategy. Patience, in the sense I mean here, means refusing to negotiate against a deadline existing only in the adjuster’s interest rather than the client’s.
I think of one case involving a construction worker with a lower back injury. The initial settlement offer arrived within three weeks of filing the claim, an offer covering his medical bills up to then and little else. Nothing about his long term prognosis had settled yet. His doctor had mentioned a possible second procedure depending on how physical therapy progressed.
Accepting this early offer would have felt like relief in the moment. It would also have closed the door on compensation for treatment his own doctor had not ruled out.
We waited. Physical therapy did not resolve the pain, and the second procedure went forward five months later. The eventual settlement reflected an injury far more serious and expensive to treat, the outcome the early offer would have prevented him from recovering.
Waiting is not passive. During this period, we kept building the file, gathering updated medical records, documenting the impact on his ability to work, and staying in regular contact with his physician about the treatment timeline. Patience without preparation is only delay. Patience paired with preparation is leverage.
I have also learned patience benefits the relationship between attorney and client, not only the settlement number. Clients who understand why a case moves at a deliberate pace tend to trust the process more than clients left wondering why nothing seems to be happening. Communication fills the space silence would otherwise leave behind, and communication is what keeps patience from feeling like neglect.
None of this means every negotiation should stretch out for months. Some cases are straightforward, and a fair offer arriving early deserves serious consideration rather than reflexive rejection. The skill lies in knowing the difference between an offer reflecting the true value of a case and an offer designed to close a claim before its full scope is understood.
I no longer see aggression and patience as opposites in negotiation. Aggression without patience often settles cases too early. Patience without follow through settles nothing at all. The strongest position sits between the two, calm enough to wait, prepared enough to make waiting worth it.
Explaining this approach to a client takes work of its own. Someone recovering from an injury, facing medical bills and missed paychecks, often wants a resolution the moment an offer arrives, even a low one. I have learned not to dismiss this instinct. Instead, I walk clients through the reasoning behind waiting, showing them the medical gaps still open, the treatment still ahead, the number an insurer would rather pay now than face after those gaps close. Clients who understand the reasoning tend to trust the strategy, even when the calendar moves slower than they hoped.
Adjusters count on impatience because impatience is common and easy to exploit. Meeting this pattern with steady, well prepared patience is one of the more reliable ways I know to protect the value of a claim, and to protect the client sitting on the other side of every decision made along the way.
Author Bio
Ashley Aframian is the founder and lead attorney of Highway Law Group, a Los Angeles personal injury, employment law, and insurance bad faith firm dedicated to helping accident victims and workers hurt on the job move through the legal system with confidence and compassion. Ashley built her practice around giving injured people direct, personal attention through what is often the hardest stretch of their lives, handling the insurance companies and the legal process so her clients are free to focus on healing. Learn more at HighwayLawGroup.com.
