Can I handle my entire injury case in Spanish?

Yes — and the distinction that matters is who is speaking

Many firms advertise that they serve Spanish-speaking clients. Look at what that usually means: a bilingual receptionist, a bilingual case manager, and an attorney you communicate with through someone else. Your lawyer hears a summary of what you said. You hear a summary of what your lawyer said. The most important conversations in your case happen secondhand.

Jimmy Suerken is a bilingual Mexican-American attorney. He takes the call, conducts the meeting, explains the options, and negotiates with the adjuster. There is nobody in between, which means nothing about your case is lost on the way to you or back.

What genuinely happens in Spanish

The first call and every call after it. Meetings, in person or by video. The explanation of what your claim is worth and why. The discussion of whether to accept an offer. The hard conversation about a weakness in the case, which is precisely the conversation that goes wrong when it is relayed. Correspondence to you. And negotiation with a Spanish-speaking adjuster where there is one.

This is not a translation of the case into Spanish afterwards. It is the case, conducted in the language you think in.

What is in English, honestly

You should know where the structural limits are rather than discovering them later.

Filings and the court record are in English. A petition filed in a Texas district court is an English document. We explain each one to you in Spanish before it is filed, but the paper itself is English.

Medical records are in English. Your treatment may be delivered in Spanish and frequently is, but the chart that an insurer reads is written in English, and errors in it are common and consequential.

Testimony uses a sworn interpreter. In a deposition or at trial you testify in Spanish through a licensed court interpreter who has taken an oath to translate truthfully. That is a formal role, not a favor, and it exists to make the record accurate rather than to accommodate you.

Texas courts back this up: on a party's motion or a witness's request, a court shall appoint a licensed court interpreter for someone who does not communicate in English in a civil proceeding. If you cannot afford the cost and file a statement of inability to pay, you are not required to pay for it.

Why a family member must not translate this

This is the part we ask people to take seriously, because it causes real damage.

An adjuster who calls and asks your daughter, your cousin or a bilingual coworker to interpret a recorded statement is not being helpful. Relatives compress, soften and guess. "Me duele la espalda baja desde el choque" becomes "his back hurts" — the onset disappears, and with it the causation. A nod meant as I hear you becomes a recorded yes. Those recordings get quoted back months later, and the person who made the error is someone you love.

It is worse with children. Asking a child to interpret a discussion about pain, money, fault or medical treatment puts a burden on them that is not theirs to carry, and it puts your claim in the hands of someone with no reason to know the words.

The same applies in the examination room. A mistranslated medical history — a prior injury described imprecisely, a symptom timeline scrambled — turns into a pre-existing condition defense that takes months to unwind. Ask for a hospital interpreter. They are available and they are free to you.

Where this matters most

We work the two ends of I-10. In El Paso, families live on both sides of the border, and it is routine for someone hurt in a crash on this side to have their care, their family and their work spread across the line. In Houston, entire working communities — Aldine, Galena Park, Channelview, the Ship Channel industrial corridor — run in Spanish, and the injuries are often the serious kind.

People in both places routinely accept less than their claim is worth because pursuing it felt like something they would have to do in a second language, with a stranger, while hurt. You do not. Llame al 713-600-6233. Su consulta es con el abogado, y es gratis.

Authority: Tex. Gov't Code § 57.002 (court interpreters)