ambulance-chase lawyer
- noun
- /ˈæmbjʊləns tʃeɪs ˈlɔɪər/
- Offensive
:
abogado cazaclientes
- Next door there's a bail bondsman; there are ambulance-chasing lawyers hanging out on the corner.
Examples
-
When I was in the hospital, an ambulance-chase lawyer approached me about filing a claim for my injuries.
-
We decided to avoid any ambulance-chase lawyers after our accident, as they often exaggerate the situation to get clients.
-
The billboard advertised a firm of ambulance-chase lawyers promising to help victims get the compensation they deserve.
Synonyms
4
8.2
A lawyer who looks for accident victims and urges them to sue for their own gain
How Aggressive
- Offensive
∞
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
ambulance-chase + lawyer
The meaning is directly inferable from the parts: a B1 learner who knows 'ambulance', 'chase' and 'lawyer' can compose them to mean a lawyer who pursues accident victims to get clients. The hyphenated form and negative connotation are idiomatic uses but do not block compositional understanding, and the 'X-lawyer' pattern is productive in English and likely recognizable across languages.
Etymology
Ambulance-chase lawyer comes from the image of a lawyer following an ambulance to hospitals or accident scenes to give their card and find clients, a kind of chase after injuries. That's why it means a lawyer who tries very hard 'to get clients' after accidents.