Offshore Injury Help
What Offshore Injury Help is (and what we are not)
Offshore Injury Help is an independent editorial and intake resource for injured maritime workers, longshore and harbor workers, offshore platform crews, commercial fishermen, cruise passengers, and the families of seamen killed at sea. The site publishes primary-source editorial guides on the federal admiralty framework that governs these injuries, and operates a free, confidential intake that routes prospective clients to a vetted network of specialty maritime injury attorneys whose practice concentrates on Jones Act, LHWCA, OCSLA, DOHSA, and general maritime law cases in the federal districts where these matters are tried.
The site is not a law firm. We do not provide legal representation. We do not give legal advice. We do not appear in court. The editor, Michael Mangione, is not a practicing attorney. The editorial team writes journalism on how injured workers and families can navigate a federal admiralty practice area that is poorly served by the general personal-injury content most readers encounter when they first start searching online.
If you are looking for a lawyer, we can route you to one through our free intake. The vetted attorneys in our network actually represent clients; we do not. If you are looking for editorial guides on the law that governs your case, those are free to read here. Both functions are funded by referral fees that the network attorneys pay when a case results in a recovery, fully disclosed to each client in writing as required by ABA Model Rule 1.5(e).
Why this site exists: the maritime injury editorial gap
Most online content about maritime injury law is published by personal-injury law firms whose primary practice is automobile collisions, premises liability, or other state-law tort work. When those firms publish about the Jones Act or the LHWCA, the content is typically a thin SEO summary written to capture search traffic, not a substantive guide written by someone who tries these cases. The content tends to be repetitive, light on primary sources, and silent on the specific federal practice considerations that separate a maritime trial lawyer from a generalist.
The structural result is that an injured maritime worker, searching online in the first days after an accident, is likely to read three or four nearly identical SEO summaries before hiring a lawyer. The summaries do not warn the worker that the case may be misclassified by a generalist, that 46 U.S.C. § 30104 (the Jones Act) is a federal negligence statute different from any state workers compensation system, that maintenance and cure exists as a separate no-fault remedy, that the Eastern District of Louisiana and the Southern District of Texas handle the bulk of maritime injury litigation in the country, or that a contingency fee agreement that does not specify the Rule 1.5(e) referral structure is a material problem.
Offshore Injury Help exists to publish the kind of editorial guidance that would have been useful to that injured worker in the first week. The guides apply the same primary-source standards used by trade press and law-review publishing: every legal and regulatory claim is grounded in the U.S. Code, the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, or a published federal court opinion, with a link to the official source. The reader can verify everything we say. The two flagship guides on the site are the twelve maritime attorney red flags (the negative signals to walk away from) and the eighteen-step vetting checklist (the positive routine for verifying an attorney before signing).
How we work: the editorial methodology
The editorial methodology is the same across every guide on the site. The aim is journalism on a specialty federal practice area, written for non-lawyers, grounded in primary sources, and free of the marketing language that dominates law-firm content.
Primary sources only
Every legal and regulatory claim cites a primary source. The U.S. Code, the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Supreme Court and federal circuit decisions, the federal court attorney admission rules, and state bar disciplinary records. Each citation links to a free public database (law.cornell.edu, supreme.justia.com, the ABA, the official federal court sites, or the relevant state bar). The reader can verify every claim by clicking through.
Quarterly review
Each guide is reviewed every quarter and updated whenever the ABA Model Rules are amended, whenever the specialty federal districts (E.D. La., S.D. Tex., S.D. Ala., S.D. Miss., W.D. La., S.D. Fla.) issue significant Jones Act, LHWCA, or OCSLA opinions, whenever state bar advertising rules are revised, or whenever the maritime statute of limitations or related deadlines change. The Last reviewed date at the top of every article reflects the most recent editorial pass.
Editor not attorney
The editor is not a practicing attorney. The editorial work is researched journalism, not personalized legal counsel. The site does not represent clients, does not appear in court, and does not give legal advice on specific cases. For advice on a specific case, the reader is routed through the free intake to a licensed maritime injury attorney in our vetted network, or, if the reader prefers, the editorial guides explain how to vet any maritime injury attorney whether inside or outside our network.
No advertorial
We do not accept payment for editorial coverage of specific attorneys or law firms. The vetting framework applies equally to attorneys inside and outside our network. The case-review intake routes to attorneys whose practices we have vetted against the published 18-step framework, and the routing operation pays referral fees to fund the editorial work. The editorial guides themselves are independent. Network attorneys do not see drafts, do not approve coverage, and do not pay for placement.
Meet the Editor: Michael Mangione
Michael Mangione is the editor and founder of Offshore Injury Help. He is not a practicing attorney. His role is editorial: researching the federal admiralty framework, writing the guides, reviewing every page against primary sources, and overseeing the intake routing to network attorneys.
Michael founded The Mangione Group, the publisher of Offshore Injury Help, after more than a decade of fractional executive work building independent editorial resources and intake systems for specialty legal verticals. He holds an MBA, Summa Cum Laude, with a concentration in Business Intelligence and Analytics, and is the author of The Unstuck Method. His expertise is in editorial publishing on legal subjects and in the operational design of how injured workers and families find the right legal help, which is precisely the work this site does.
The editorial team works with consulting maritime injury attorneys (members of the vetted network) for source-checking on technical points of practice. The consulting attorneys do not write the guides, do not direct editorial coverage, and do not pay for placement. Their role is limited to confirming that a draft accurately describes a point of federal admiralty practice. The final editorial responsibility rests with the editor.
Michael is the editor of a site that publishes maritime injury journalism and routes injured workers to vetted maritime injury attorneys. He is not an attorney. He does not represent clients. He oversees the editorial standards and the network vetting. If you want to know what the editor of this site looks like, you can see his headshot at the bottom of every guide we publish.
How our attorney network is curated
The vetting framework applied to attorneys in our network is the same eighteen-step framework we publish in the maritime attorney vetting checklist. The checklist exists to help readers evaluate any maritime injury attorney, including the attorneys in our network. We apply the same routine to our own intake routing.
Phase 1: Pre-intake due diligence
Before an attorney is added to the network, we run the Phase 1 steps from the public checklist: state bar admission and good standing, federal court admissions in the relevant maritime injury districts (Eastern District of Louisiana, Southern District of Texas, Southern District of Florida, Southern District of Alabama, Southern District of Mississippi, Western District of Louisiana), PACER search for actual maritime case history over the past three to five years, reported decisions review on Justia, CourtListener, and Google Scholar, attorney discipline records on the state bar disciplinary database, and a review of the firm's published writings on maritime law.
Phase 2: Practice interview
We conduct a structured practice interview with the attorney covering the Phase 2 questions from the public checklist: clean recognition of the four federal statutes (Jones Act, LHWCA, OCSLA, DOHSA), trial-to-verdict record over the past five years with specific case names and federal districts, the maintenance and cure protocol for the first thirty days after intake, the firm's primary handling lawyer practice, the firm's maritime liability and damages expert witness network, and the firm's referral disclosure practices under ABA Model Rule 1.5(e).
Phase 3: Engagement letter review
We review a redacted version of the firm's standard engagement letter for maritime injury cases against the Phase 3 standards: contingency percentage and tier structure clearly stated, case-expense clause clearly stated, primary handling attorney named, MMI settlement commitment language available on request, maintenance and cure protocol language available on request, and Rule 1.5(e) referral disclosure language complete and compliant.
Ongoing review
Network attorneys are reviewed quarterly against the same eighteen-step framework. Any change in disciplinary status, any departure from the practice areas the firm represented at intake to the network, or any complaint from a referred client triggers an immediate re-review. The network composition is dynamic. Membership is not permanent.
The business model that funds the work
The editorial work and the intake operation are both free to prospective clients. The operation is funded by referral fees paid by network attorneys on cases that result in a recovery. The arrangement is the standard plaintiff-side maritime injury referral model: a referring resource (in this case, an editorial site with an intake) connects an injured worker with specialty counsel, and the specialty firm pays a portion of its contingency fee to the referring resource when the case resolves.
This model is permitted and regulated by ABA Model Rule 1.5(e) (adopted by most state bars with modifications). Rule 1.5(e) requires that any division of a contingency fee between lawyers who are not in the same firm be (1) reasonable in total, (2) disclosed to the client in writing, and (3) consented to by the client in writing. Network attorneys retained through our intake are required to comply with Rule 1.5(e) and to disclose the referral arrangement to the client in writing in the engagement letter.
What this means for the prospective client
The prospective client pays nothing to Offshore Injury Help at any stage. The case-review intake is free. The editorial guides are free. The eventual contingency fee on a case that results in a recovery is the standard maritime injury contingency fee (typically one-third before suit, 40% after suit is filed, sometimes 45% on post-verdict appellate work). The referral fee paid by the network firm to Offshore Injury Help is paid out of the firm's portion of the contingency fee, not on top of it. The total fee to the client is the same as it would be if the client had hired the firm directly.
What this means for editorial independence
Network attorneys do not control editorial coverage. They do not see drafts. They do not pay for placement. They do not direct what topics we cover or how we cover them. The editorial guides are written for the prospective client's interest in vetting any maritime injury attorney, including ours. The vetting framework applies equally to attorneys inside and outside the network. The editorial guides that walk readers through how to spot a generalist or how to vet an engagement letter apply to every attorney in the field, not selectively.
We make money when a case our intake refers settles or wins. The network attorney pays us a portion of the contingency fee. The client pays nothing extra; the referral fee comes out of the lawyer's cut, not on top of it. Every referral is disclosed to the client in writing. This is how independent editorial work on a contingency-fee practice area gets funded. It is the same model that funds most plaintiff-side legal referral services.
