Pain and suffering cannot be seen or heard and usually, there is no physical evidence to prove its existence. Illinois lawyers are called upon to prove the invisible, working against hundreds of years of social and cultural ideologies, to show the 12 member juries what is silently tormenting their clients.

To make matters more complicated for medical malpractice lawyers, medical professionals usually disregard pain and suffering. In order to treat severely injured patients effectively, many of the best doctors do not allow themselves to empathize. As a result, pain and suffering is a symptom that is easily ignored.

In addition to medical professionals, juries can also be unwilling to empathize with patients who raise pain and suffering as a cause of action for medical malpractice. Illinois medical malpractice lawyers have to work against strong political beliefs and viewpoints of jurors. Republican-minded jurors tend to be less sympathetic with a patient’s pain and suffering and more cognizant of the need for tort reform. There is a strong ideology that patients should be able to deal with pain and not open the floodgates of new litigation into the judicial system. Unlike other causes of action, such as severe burns, quadriplegia, and mutilation, pain and suffering is invisible and impossible to objectively quantify, so it is all too often disregarded.