Choosing the right medical negligence solicitor

Experience

Your solicitor should have a proven track record in successfully settling medical negligence. This will demonstrate to you that they and their legal team have the experience, knowledge and skills that will be necessary to ensure your claim for medical negligence or personal injury compensation is successful.

Medical Negligence claims are complex often due to the severity of the injuries and the impact of these injuries on the life of the directly affected individual and their family.

Personality

You and your lawyer will need to have a strong relationship. Your claim for personal injury compensation or medical negligence is unlikely to be settled quickly and the more severe the injuries and the greater the impact on your life, the higher the compensation amount you are likely to require. This means you and your solicitor are likely to need to work together over many months, and perhaps years.

It is important that you have a good relationship with your solicitor, that you are comfortable talking and meeting with them and that you trust and believe that they and their team have your best interests at heart.

Independent recognition

Your choice of solicitor should be independently recognised as having specialist expertise in serious injury and medical negligence claims. Recognition such as that by The Legal 500 – an independent directory of the UK’s top law firms – ranks Blackwater Law as a ‘leading firm’ in recognition of its lawyers’ specialist experience. Blackwater Law is ranked by The Legal 500 for both its experience in serious personal injury claims and medical negligence claims.

Blackwater law also is accredited by the Law Society and Headway, the brain injury charity.

Links with medical experts

It is essential that your solicitor has links with a wide range of medical experts. For you to obtain compensation, your legal case will need to be supported by medical evidence and medical reports. These will need to be compiled by medical experts that your lawyer instructs.

These medical experts will review the circumstances of your case, and your medical history and provide commentary and opinion on your medical condition, prognosis, and treatment to date. In cases of medical negligence, these experts will also comment on how you were treated by your negligent doctor, hospital, nurse, surgeon, or GP.

Your solicitor’s ability to liaise with the best medical experts to produce the strongest and most credible evidence in support of your claim will be critical to the success of your medical negligence, or personal injury claim.

Blackwater Law has a unique panel of leading medical experts which it has built up over years of dealing with serious injury and medical negligence claims on behalf of clients across England and Wales. These experts have proved crucial in successfully winning large compensation claims for our clients. Such is the experience of the team of solicitors at Blackwater Law and the strength of our panel of medical experts, you can be confident in knowing that we will always instruct the best and most appropriate medical experts to build the strongest claim on your behalf.

Understanding your needs

Your solicitor will need to have an acute understanding of your life before and after the event that led to the injury when putting together their case for compensation. It is crucial to ensure that your lawyer includes factors such as funding any dependent children, paying for professional care (now and in the future), paying for a new home or amendments to your existing home, new transport, new specialist equipment and any other factors you need for you and your family to live beyond your injury.