There has been a
warning reported in the Law Society’s Gazette by leading clinical negligence
lawyers of the risks arising from growing numbers of personal injury
practitioners looking to carry out their work.
Legal
Consultancy Zebra has reported a tenfold increase in enquiries about setting up
or expanding medical negligence cases since the beginning of the year. The majority of those contacts came from
personal injury firms hit by cuts to fixed fees for RTA claims.
Clinical
negligence solicitors say that cases in their sector require specialist
knowledge and major investment to ensure they are handled correctly.
Zoe Holland,
Managing Director of Zebra Legal said: “the temptation for some firms is to
consider placing their experienced personal injury solicitors into the role of
clinical negligence risk assessor.
Unless the assessor has significant experience in this field, or has a
medical background, this scenario is set to fail.”
David Jones,
Senior Partner and Head of Clinical Negligence at Morgan Jones & Pett and a
member of the Law Society Personal Injury Panel/APIL Accredited Clinical
Negligence Specialist said “it is important clients are educated and know that
the lawyer they are seeing is a specialist in this complicated field”. Morgan Jones & Pett has joined SCIL
(Society of Clinical Injury Lawyers) which now has more than 100 firms as
members and is pressing for a quality mark to inform clients they are
instructing a specialist.
It is obviously
important to ensure that you look to instruct a specialist firm which Morgan
Jones & Pett are, being consistently recommended in the Legal 500 and
having Law Society Panel Members carrying out the clinical negligence work
within the practice.
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