How Much Work Does It Take To Prepare for Trial?

 I have a medical malpractice case.  There are two doctors and a hospital that have been sued.  My lawyer says the case won’t be tried for two years.  Why is that?  How much work is involved?

It doesn’t surprise me that it would take two years to get your case to trial in Tennessee and, depending on where you live in the state, that may be a relatively quick amount of time to get to trial.

Your question requires much more information to give a more accurate answer, but let me say this generally.  The main factors that affect how quickly a case gets to trial are the diligence, expertise, and experience of the lawyers involved, the number of parties to the case (more parties = more lawyers = more scheduling difficulties), the nature of the dispute (more complicated = more time), the ability of the trial judge to control the lawyers,  the amount of cases pending before the trial judge (more cases increases the time to get to trial because more cases are contributing for the same trial dates), and whether the county where the case is pending is urban or rural (in rural areas judges sit in multiple counties and may hold trials in a small county only  a couple times per year).

I have done medical malpractice work on behalf of patients for almost 30 years, and I can say that our office will invest 1000 hours working on almost every case with multiple defendants in which depositions are necessary and more time if expert depositions and trial are necessary.  Most medical malpractice cases are extremely complicated and require a significant investment of time and money.