You believe that you’ve been treated badly by the hospital, you feel angry and you want to make a claim.
Who do you turn to?
It’s a claim for compensation, so you probably think of a lawyer – a solicitor. Does it matter which firm you choose?
It sure does! Like every other profession, the law is becoming increasingly specialised. That means that if you pick the wrong lawyer, though he may be willing to take your case on, he may not have the depth of experience that your claim really needs to provide the best chance of success.
Medical negligence claims are tough. The success rate is lower than in other types of personal injury claims. Even to the experienced solicitor, the law often seems stacked against the injured patient.
We have to prove breach of the doctor’s duty of care to the patient – ie. that the doctor acted in a way that no reasonably competent doctor working in that field would have acted (the ‘reasonable competence’ test); and that that breach of duty of care caused or permitted the injury suffered by the patient, or at least made a material contribution to it.
How can this be done?
The lawyers’ job is to study the medical records and other evidence; get opinions from leading medical specialists; study those opinions and decide whether the claim has sufficient prospects of success and if it does, press the claim to settlement or to trial.
But the experienced legal team knows its way around the records, knows which experts to instruct, knows how to interrogate those experts to check not only for the strengths but also the weaknesses in the case theory, knows how the defence team is likely to react, knows how to push the claim in court proceedings efficiently to a satisfactory conclusion, keeping their client fully informed on the way.
How can you find out whether the solicitor’s firm truly has specialists?
There are two recognised specialist panels – the Law Society’s Clinical Negligence Panel and the Solicitors Referral Panel of the charity Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA). Members of these panels have had to satisfy requirements of experience, training and expertise.
Legal aid in clinical negligence has recently been limited to cases relating to severe brain injury occurring at or close to birth; the Legal Aid Agency insists that firms taking cases on legal aid must have a member of one of the Panels.
Most cases now will be funded by Conditional Fee Agreements (no win, no fee). Any solicitors’ firm can offer such deals but some firms which advertise for clinical negligence claims may have limited experience, with one or two lawyers doing medical claims as only a part of a varied caseload, or with only a few years’ track record.
So potential claimants must ask two key questions of any firm they approach:
- Does the firm have a member of one of the medical negligence specialist panels in the team?
- How many lawyers in the team work only in medical negligence claims?
In the law, as in all professions, specialist experience and expertise counts.
We at Jackson Lees have three members of the specialist panels in our team. We have over two decades of experience in clinical negligence. Our dedicated team of lawyers will be able to identify the issues affecting you and your loved ones and offer you the best practical advice on the options available to you.