The honest answer is both, depending on which part of the process you are asking about, and understanding why requires understanding something fundamental about how insurance companies think about claims. If you are asking because you are trying to decide whether to hire an attorney, or because you already have one and your case feels like it has slowed to a crawl, the mechanics behind this question matter more than the simple answer, and the simple answer is almost always misread anyway.

Start with the effect an attorney has on the early stages of a claim. If you approach the insurance company on your own shortly after an accident, you will likely get a response quickly. An adjuster will call you back, ask about your injuries, express concern, and potentially extend an offer within days or weeks. This speed is not goodwill. It is strategy. Unrepresented claimants are the most cost-effective settlements in the insurance industry. They accept less because they do not know what their case is worth, they do not know what evidence needs to be gathered, they do not know which damages categories they are entitled to claim, and they are often in financial distress that makes a check, any check, feel like relief. The insurance company’s early responsiveness to an unrepresented claimant is designed to create urgency and intimacy, to make the process feel bilateral and reasonable, and to get a release signed before the claimant has fully assessed what the accident has cost them.

When an attorney enters the picture, that dynamic stops. The adjuster can no longer contact you directly once you have legal representation. All communication goes through your attorney. The insurer now knows that their standard playbook for unrepresented claimants, the quick call, the sympathetic ear, the low early offer dressed up as generosity, does not work anymore. They also know that an attorney will gather the evidence they were hoping you would not think to gather, that the damages demand will be comprehensive in ways that yours would not have been, and that there is now a realistic possibility of litigation if they do not take the claim seriously. The response to all of this is not faster outreach. It is a more careful, more deliberate evaluation process. From your perspective, it can feel like things have slowed down. From the insurer’s perspective, the risk profile of the claim just changed.

So yes, having an attorney typically extends the pre-settlement timeline relative to settling without one. That is the sense in which lawyers make cases take longer. But the comparison being made in that statement is not the right comparison. The right comparison is not between settling with a lawyer versus settling without one. It is between settling with a lawyer versus settling without one for an amount that genuinely compensates you for what the accident has cost. When you account for what studies consistently show, which is that represented claimants receive substantially higher net recoveries than unrepresented ones even after accounting for attorney fees, the speed of the unrepresented settlement is not an advantage. It is the mechanism of the disadvantage.

There is a specific dynamic at work in the represented versus unrepresented comparison that most people never hear articulated plainly. Insurance adjusters evaluate claims in part by assessing the cost of fighting them. An unrepresented claimant cannot file a lawsuit on their own with any credibility. They cannot depose witnesses, retain experts, or take the case to trial in any meaningful sense. The adjuster knows this, and it affects the offer in a way that has nothing to do with the merits of the injury. The settlement offer for an unrepresented claimant is priced not just on the claim’s value but on the claim’s threat. If there is no credible threat of litigation, the pressure on the insurer to offer fair value is dramatically reduced. An attorney does not just add legal skill to your claim. They add the credible threat of consequences that is the only thing that gives an insurer a financial reason to pay what they should.

Now turn to the timeline question within represented cases, because this is where the question gets more nuanced and more honest. Hiring an attorney does not guarantee a fast resolution. It guarantees a more complete one. And the things that make a resolution complete are often the same things that take time. Treatment needs to reach a point of maximum medical improvement before the full damages picture can be presented. Evidence needs to be gathered, records need to be obtained, sometimes investigators need to be retained. Expert opinions need to be developed. A demand package that is assembled at the right time, meaning after the damages are fully documented, is far more valuable than one assembled quickly. An insurer who receives a demand before treatment is complete can simply say they are waiting for the medical picture to stabilize, and they are right to do so. An insurer who receives a comprehensive, well-documented demand after treatment is complete has no principled basis for delay other than negotiating toward the lowest number they can get away with.

Here is the distinguishing insight that most people searching this question have never encountered, and it cuts directly against one of the most persistent misconceptions about personal injury cases: the length of your case after you hire an attorney is largely a function of the choices your attorney makes about case development, not a function of the insurer’s willingness to engage. An attorney who files suit early and aggressively pursues discovery, who retains experts early and discloses them on schedule, who pushes the case toward trial rather than letting it drift, will reach a meaningful settlement conversation much faster than an attorney who sends a demand letter and then waits six months for a response before following up. The insurer does not control your case’s timeline. Your attorney does, and the difference between a case that resolves in fourteen months and the same case that resolves in thirty-six months is often entirely attributable to how actively the attorney is moving it forward.

This matters because many law firms, particularly high-volume personal injury practices, handle far more cases than their staff can actively manage. A case that is not being actively developed is a case where the insurer has no reason to move. Adjusters who receive no updates, no discovery requests, no deposition notices, no expert disclosures, have no incentive to increase their reserve or elevate the file to someone with more settlement authority. The file sits. The months pass. The client calls and is told the case is progressing. What is actually happening is that the case is dormant, and dormant cases resolve on the insurer’s preferred timeline, which is as late as possible for as little as possible. This is the quiet, uncomfortable reality behind many personal injury cases that seem to drag on without explanation.

The procedural milestones that accelerate settlement in represented cases are the same ones that create actual cost and consequence for the insurer. Filing a lawsuit, serving discovery, noticing depositions, disclosing liability and damages experts, and getting a trial date are the events that change the insurer’s financial calculus from theoretical to real. Each of these steps costs the insurer money in defense attorney fees, disruption to their insured’s life, and increasingly concrete trial risk. An attorney who moves a case through these milestones on a deliberate schedule is compressing the timeline to a serious settlement conversation by making delay expensive rather than free. An attorney who treats those steps as distant future possibilities rather than near-term tools is extending your case unnecessarily.

There is a practical question embedded in this that you should be asking your attorney directly if you are in a case that feels stalled: what is the next concrete event that will change the insurance company’s calculation, and when is it happening? If your attorney can answer that question specifically, something like a deposition in six weeks, an expert disclosure deadline in three months, or a trial date eight months out, you have a case that is being managed with purpose. If the answer is some version of waiting to hear back from the adjuster, you have a case where the insurer has no external pressure to move and your attorney has not yet created any. That is a conversation worth having directly, not to be confrontational but because you are entitled to understand where your case is in the sequence and what is being done to move it forward.

One variable that affects settlement timing in represented cases that almost nobody discusses openly is the attorney’s fee structure and its interaction with case costs. Personal injury attorneys almost universally work on contingency, meaning they receive a percentage of the recovery, typically one-third. They also advance case costs, meaning filing fees, expert fees, deposition costs, and investigation expenses, and they recoup those costs from the settlement. A case that requires significant investment in experts, depositions, and litigation expenses before settlement becomes economically complex from the attorney’s perspective as well as the client’s. Some attorneys factor this into decisions about how aggressively to pursue litigation. An attorney who has advanced $30,000 in costs on a case has both more incentive to resolve it and more justification for a settlement that accounts for those costs. Understanding that your attorney has a financial stake in the timing of resolution is not a cynical observation. It is a structural reality that occasionally aligns their interests with yours and occasionally creates tension worth being aware of.

The bad faith dimension is also worth introducing here. In Missouri and most other jurisdictions, an insurance company has a duty to act in good faith in handling claims. A pattern of unreasonable delay, refusal to investigate adequately, or lowball offers made without a reasonable basis for the valuation can, in extreme cases, give rise to a bad faith claim. An attorney who is documenting the insurer’s conduct throughout the case, preserving evidence of their valuation methodology and the reasonableness of their offers, is building a record that has value beyond the underlying claim. This is not something that arises in routine cases, but in cases where an insurer is genuinely behaving unreasonably, an attorney’s presence and documentation practices create accountability that no unrepresented claimant could create on their own.

There is one final timing consideration that almost always goes unmentioned: cases settle faster when both sides are ready at the same time. Your side is ready when the medical picture is complete, the damages are documented, the experts are prepared, and the attorney has the capacity to focus on this specific case. The insurer’s side is ready when they have enough information to make a confident expected value calculation, when trial is close enough that the cost of not settling is real, and when the claim has been elevated to someone with enough authority to approve a meaningful number. An attorney who understands this synchronization manages the case to create a moment where both conditions are met simultaneously rather than waiting for the insurer to decide it is time. Creating that moment, rather than waiting for it, is one of the things that separates attorneys who consistently resolve cases efficiently and at full value from those whose cases languish without apparent reason.

The question of whether a lawyer makes your case faster or slower is ultimately the wrong question. The right question is whether a lawyer makes your case better, and on every dimension that actually matters, the answer is yes. Better documentation, better damages presentation, better negotiating position, better accountability for the insurer, and a realistic path to trial that gives the insurer a reason to take the claim seriously. The tradeoff for those things is a more deliberate timeline than the quick, inadequate settlement the insurer was hoping you would accept. That tradeoff is almost always worth making. Whether you then have an attorney who manages that timeline actively and purposefully, or one who lets it drift, is the variable that actually controls how long your case takes.

This article is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Settlement timelines, litigation strategies, bad faith standards, and attorney fee structures vary significantly by jurisdiction, case type, and the specific facts of each matter. Nothing in this article should be relied upon as legal advice specific to your situation. If you have been injured in an accident and are considering whether to retain an attorney, consult a licensed personal injury attorney in your state.