Your life was going on the right track when one day you got an email that you are fired from your job. One can only imagine how earth-shattering that new is for you. Getting fired from a job can not only put your career at stake but also you fear of suffering from tremendous financial troubles. You have bills, to pay, home loans, school fees, and a whole lot of responsibilities on your shoulders. Therefore, without cribbing on the situation that you have been fired from the job, it is time to take the right steps. If you strongly feel that your termination was wrongful, then you have the right to seek legal advice from one of the best employee wrongful termination lawyers.
It is difficult to classify whether your firing was wrongful or not, especially if you are an at-will employee. At-will means that you or your employer can fire you at any time from your job without giving any reason. And to prove that your termination was wrongful, you must have an illegal reason like retaliation or discrimination. And if you feel that your reason for termination was not right, you must hire a lawyer to get hang of the situation.
What you must-do if you think that your termination was wrongful? If you are worried that your rights were violated when your employer terminated you from the job, then there are certain steps that you need to take promptly.
• Keep the documentation of all the circumstances that are related to your termination.
• Ask your employer to let you see your personnel files.
• Make sure that you are keeping a record of all the emails, verbal exchanges, messages, etc related to your termination.
When you have all of these things with you, it is time that you contact an employee wrongful termination lawyer right away. And to successfully go around the wrongful termination case, you must be able to prove that your employer terminated you for an illegal reason. That also means that you are holding solid evidence against it. And that is why you must be able to tap and secure all the correspondence between you and the employer. Also, make sure that you are documenting any of your performance reviews if you have as it adds value to the case.
Remember that you have a wrongful termination case if your employer has fired you for:
• Discriminatory reasons.
• Raising your voice about a protected issue/retaliation.
• Saying no to violate any law or performing any illegal activity.
Here are a few factors that you need to research before hiring employee wrongful termination lawyers.
How much do I need to pay the lawyer?
It is going to be your first question since you are facing a financial crisis because of the lost job. The majority of the employee wrongful termination lawyers work on a contingency basis, which means, when you win the case, the lawyer gets a certain percentage of your claim as his fee. Therefore, you need to have to worry about throwing in a lot of money for your wrongful termination case.
How long is it going to take to settle the claim?
How much it will take to settle down the claim completely depends on the reason behind it. If you have pressed the charges of discrimination against your employer, then the case goes to the Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and it takes at least 180 days for investigation. Right from filing the case to the verdict of the jury, it usually takes around 12 to 16 months in federal court and 12 to 20 months in the state court.
To have a valid wrongful termination case, firstly you need to do some homework regarding your situation and then about the lawyer that you are planning to hire. When you have all the things in your hands, it will become easy for you and the lawyer to quickly sort out the options that you have in your case and act as soon as possible. But before you do any of that, make sure that you are researching the above-mentioned things properly before hiring any of the employee wrongful termination lawyers.