We’re all ambulance chasers.

There’s no sense hiding away from it, this one comes up frequently. Sometimes in jest and often not. I, and most of my colleagues in medical negligence, have at some point in our career been called an “ambulance chaser”. It carries an undertone that the lawyer concerned is unscrupulous, unethical or both. It also brings with it the idea that a victim of medical negligence cannot bring a claim without themselves being tainted, whether because of perceived stigma in suing the NHS or having to deal with an “ambulance-chasing” lawyer, when in fact we are nothing of the sort.

For the record: I’ve never chased an ambulance, nor have any of my colleagues. We carry the same duties and responsibilities as any other lawyer in any other area of law, things such as telling the truth in everything that you do, never misleading the court, only making an argument that you can properly support with evidence, and so on.

We’re only interested in money.

It’s true that I have a family to feed and in that sense it’s important that I get paid to work, but that’s not why I do what I do.

Over the many years I’ve worked at this firm I have seen and acted for clients with a wide range of injuries. Brain damage. Spinal cord injury. Amputation. The long, painful, goodbye of terminal cancer. Those things destroy the lives of the victim. It wrecks families and makes people suicidal. Even for victims who survive, they and their families have to grieve for the loss of the life that could have been.

I’m a lawyer but I’m not made of stone; I am still a human being. Cases usually take years to handle from start to finish, and often clients become as close to friends as a legal professional can have in those circumstances. You see first-hand their lows, which are plentiful, and when called upon you move heaven and earth to try and fix them.

If the evidence brings victory for my client, then I have the genuine privilege of seeing the results of all the good it can do for them: Professional carers, so that mum and dad can get their first full night’s sleep in ten years. Adapted accommodation, so that a child getting too heavy to carry can be hoisted from their wheelchair into the bath. A specialised wheelchair so that a client can walk the dog in the woods again.

We’re “out to get” doctors.

I know that doctors have a very difficult job and that this government isn’t making it much easier for them. I have had treatment from local hospitals and so have my family –we have been fortunate to receive excellent care each time and we have been grateful for it. The point is that not everybody is so fortunate.

I have acted in a number of cases where I have seen good doctors being negligent due to particular circumstances. I have seen, thankfully, very few truly awful doctors.

Having said all of that, none of the above will give my client, whoever it may be, the ability to work again, or take them out of a wheelchair, or repair the irreparable brain damage. There is still a victim. A career lost, a marriage ended, a life that should never have been taken down that path. Is the victim simply to accept all that as “one of those things”? A condition without remedy? As unpalatable as some find it, a payment of damages is the closest thing we can do to get that person back to “normal”, or as close as can be.

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