A demand package is not just a letter with exhibits attached. For plaintiff personal-injury firms, it is the adjuster’s first organized view of liability, medical causation, damages, and the risk of forcing the case into litigation.
The problem is that most demand-package mistakes happen before drafting starts. The file is missing a key bill, the chronology buries a treatment gap, the liability section overstates what the evidence can prove, or the adjuster receives a polished demand that still leaves too many easy objections. This checklist is designed for PI attorneys who want a cleaner pre-send process before the demand goes out.
Start with the adjuster’s review path
Carrier review is often more mechanical than attorneys would like. An adjuster may be looking for coverage, liability, treatment consistency, specials, liens, prior injuries, policy limits exposure, and authority justification in a short review window. If the file is disorganized, even a good case can look harder to evaluate than it really is.
That does not mean the demand should be written for the lowest common denominator. It means the package should make the strongest defensible points easy to verify. A premises case with incident photos, a slip report, urgent-care records, orthopedic follow-up, and imaging should not force the reviewer to hunt across twenty PDFs to understand what happened. A soft-tissue auto case with a treatment gap should not pretend the gap does not exist; it should explain the sequence in a way that tracks the record.
Before drafting, the firm should know what the adjuster will check first:
- Is coverage confirmed, and are policy limits known or reasonably requested?
- Does liability rest on evidence, not adjectives?
- Do the medical records support the claimed mechanism of injury?
- Are specials complete, current, and reconciled against bills and liens?
- Are any gaps, prior injuries, or causation problems addressed directly?
That review path should shape the package before the demand letter is drafted. Legal Power AI’s demand-letter workflow is built around that same idea: the document is only as useful as the organized case file and attorney judgment behind it.
The pre-send demand package checklist
A practical checklist should be short enough to use on every case, but specific enough to catch the problems that lead to delay, low initial authority, or avoidable follow-up. For most plaintiff PI matters, the pre-send review should cover six buckets.
1. Coverage and recipient details
Confirm the carrier, claim number, insured name, date of loss, adjuster contact, and delivery method. If policy limits have been disclosed, make sure the demand aligns with the coverage posture. If limits have not been disclosed, the letter should not quietly assume facts the firm does not have. In California, attorneys should also be careful when framing time-limited demands and policy-limits positions, because a sloppy deadline or incomplete condition can create unnecessary disputes later.
2. Liability proof
The package should include the evidence that makes liability understandable without overselling it: police reports, incident reports, photographs, witness information, property or vehicle damage, statements, and any relevant notice evidence. The letter should distinguish between established facts and legal argument. That distinction matters because exaggeration gives the adjuster an easy reason to discount the rest of the package.
3. Medical chronology
The medical section should track treatment in a clear sequence: first evaluation, diagnostic testing, conservative care, specialist referrals, procedures, discharge status, future-care recommendations, and unresolved symptoms. Gaps in treatment, prior similar complaints, and delayed diagnosis issues should be spotted before the demand goes out. If the attorney plans to address them, the explanation should be record-based rather than defensive.
4. Bills, liens, and specials
Medical specials should reconcile across bills, records, lien documents, health-plan payments, and provider balances. A demand package that lists one total in the narrative and a different total in the exhibit packet invites a slow response. If Medi-Cal, ERISA, hospital, or provider liens are in play, the package should identify what is known and what remains subject to resolution. For more detail on the lien side of the workflow, see Legal Power AI’s related post on lien resolution in California PI cases.
5. Damages narrative
The damages section should connect the records to the plaintiff’s actual losses without drifting into unsupported storytelling. Work limitations, daily activity changes, sleep disruption, missed family obligations, and ongoing pain can matter, but the package should separate what is documented from what is attorney argument. A concise, credible damages narrative usually beats a long paragraph full of generic suffering language.
6. Exhibit quality
Exhibits should be complete, legible, and ordered in a way that matches the narrative. Duplicate PDFs, rotated pages, unlabeled bills, missing radiology reports, and scattered screenshots make the demand feel less reliable. Even when the carrier has access to some records through prior exchanges, the demand package should stand on its own.
Common mistakes that weaken otherwise good demands
The most expensive demand-package errors are usually not dramatic. They are small workflow failures that make the case easier to question.
- Sending the demand before the bill set is reconciled. If the specials number changes after the demand is sent, the carrier may treat the whole valuation as unstable.
- Ignoring treatment gaps. A two-month gap may have a reasonable explanation, but silence lets the adjuster write the explanation for you.
- Overloading the package with every document in the file. More pages do not always mean more leverage. The package should include what proves the demand, not every internal artifact.
- Using boilerplate liability language. “Your insured was negligent” is not analysis. Tie the liability point to the evidence and the applicable theory.
- Failing to QA the final PDF packet. Broken bookmarks, missing exhibits, and inconsistent numbering are small signals that can make a serious claim look rushed.
These mistakes are preventable when the firm treats demand prep as a workflow rather than a writing assignment. The draft is the final expression of the analysis, not the place where the file should first become organized.
A practical attorney review sequence before sending
Before anything leaves the firm, the attorney review should answer three questions.
- Would I be comfortable defending every factual statement in this demand? If not, revise the statement or cite the exhibit more precisely.
- Can the adjuster verify the main valuation points quickly? If the answer is no, improve the chronology, exhibit order, or specials summary.
- Does the letter preserve attorney judgment? AI-assisted drafting, templates, and staff workflows can help, but the attorney remains responsible for accuracy, strategy, and final approval.
For higher-stakes demands, that review may also include deadline discipline, policy-limits posture, CCP § 998 strategy, and whether the demand language could create ambiguity if later scrutinized. Those are attorney calls. The checklist should surface them early enough for real judgment, not after the draft is already being rushed out.
How Legal Power AI fits
Legal Power AI helps plaintiff PI firms turn organized case materials into attorney-reviewed demand-letter drafts faster, while keeping the lawyer in control of the final analysis. The goal is not to replace case strategy; it is to reduce the document-prep drag that keeps attorneys and staff from focusing on liability, damages, negotiation posture, and the parts of the claim that actually require judgment.
Bottom line
A strong demand package is built before the demand letter is written. Coverage, liability, medical chronology, specials, liens, damages, and exhibits all need a quick but disciplined pre-send review. When those pieces are clean, the letter can do its job: present the claim clearly, credibly, and in a way the adjuster can evaluate without unnecessary friction.
Demand prep without the drag
Built by personal-injury attorneys, for personal-injury attorneys. See how Legal Power AI helps firms draft demand letters from organized case materials while preserving attorney review.
