Personal Injury

Measuring Quality in Personal Injury and Clinical Negligence

In our view quality is not measured by winning awards.  Awards within the industry are on the basis of self-promotion so that the best spin an award winner can put forward is that of all the nominees who put themselves forward, an independent panel felt they were the best.

However, there are 3 independent bodies that do assess quality within the personal injury and clinical negligence legal field.

The Law Society runs a Personal Injury Panel and a Clinical Negligence Panel.  Membership details can be checked at The Law Society.  This is a little confusing, but if you look at each solicitor there is a heading “areas of law”, which is what the solicitor says they specialise in, and then there is a heading “accreditation schemes”, which are the Panel memberships accredited by the Law Society.

The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) runs a series of schemes.  Please note that it is also possible to simply be a member of APIL, which is not the same as accreditation.  APIL have a scheme whereby personal injury lawyers can be accredited as Senior Litigators, Fellows or Senior Fellows, depending on the amount of experience they have.  APIL also run an accredited office scheme.  APIL accreditation details can be found at http://www.apil.org.uk/.

Finally, Action Against Medical Accidents (AvMA) run a scheme of accrediting clinical negligence lawyers.  For more details see http://www.avma.org.uk/

Park Woodfine Heald Mellows LLP are members of all 5 schemes.