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PI Brief Update

Risk Management: Avoiding Professional Negligence Claims in the New Litigation Landscape - Peter Causton, Member of Law Society Civil Justice Committee, Mediator and Deputy District Judge

06/06/14. There have always been claims against lawyers by disgruntled clients for the loss of opportunity to bring or pursue a personal injury claim, but with the introduction of the cost cutting Jackson Reforms and fixed fees, there are ever more ways in which errors, omissions and misjudgements can occur, leading to claims. The personal injury market is being decimated and as a result experienced lawyers are leaving the field and less experienced paralegals are managing large caseloads.

The pursuit of professional negligence claims has been described by one lawyer as a form of “cannibalism”, with more fees to be earned pursuing a professional negligence claim than the original personal injury claim. However, this should be tempered by the difficulties in obtaining funding to pursue professional negligence claims, in respect of which there are no QOCS to cushion the blow of adverse costs orders.

The main issue that leads to claims is that the client in a personal injury claim is often...

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All information on this site was believed to be correct by the relevant authors at the time of writing. All content is for information purposes only and is not intended as legal advice. No liability is accepted by either the publisher or the author(s) for any errors or omissions (whether negligent or not) that it may contain. 

The opinions expressed in the articles are the authors' own, not those of Law Brief Publishing Ltd, and are not necessarily commensurate with general legal or medico-legal expert consensus of opinion and/or literature. Any medical content is not exhaustive but at a level for the non-medical reader to understand. 

Professional advice should always be obtained before applying any information to particular circumstances.

Excerpts from judgments and statutes are Crown copyright. Any Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of OPSI and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland under the Open Government Licence.