If you are studying to become a solicitor, you have probably already given some consideration to what type of law you would like to be involved in when you begin your career properly. With so many forms of law where people need help and advice, it can be a daunting prospect to choose a specialism, especially considering that your choice in this will have a bigger impact on your career options and job satisfaction than just about any other choice you have to make – beyond becoming a lawyer in the first place, of course!
One of the many areas of law that you could consider is medical malpractice and medical negligence. But what does this involve day to day, and is it a choice that could be of interest to you?
What Type of Cases Do Medical Negligence Lawyers Take On?
Medical negligence solicitors mainly handle claims for compensation from individuals who believe they have been affected negatively by medical practitioners not doing their jobs to the accepted standards. Medical negligence lawyers pursue compensation on behalf of their clients from both private healthcare practices and the NHS.
What Sort of Things Do People Claim Compensation For Using Medical Negligence Solicitors in The UK?
There is a huge range of situations in which someone may be eligible to make a compensation claim for medical negligence, but the most common include:
- Mistakes in drug prescriptions that led to a harmful outcome. This can include the wrong dosage being prescribed, the wrong medicine being administered, or someone being given a drug that contains something they have a known allergy to.
- Negligence in the care of pregnant women that lead to health issues or avoidable injury to mother or child. Sometimes, things like cerebral palsy are the result of medical negligence in pregnancy, and in these cases, parents can be eligible for large compensation claims to cover the lifetime of care the child will need.
- Surgical errors. You may hear of things like surgical instruments being left inside people’s bodies, or the wrong surgery being given to people. As well as these more dramatic situations, surgical errors can also include things like an injury to organs during surgery on other nearby body parts.
- Cosmetic surgery negligence. Botched plastic surgery or surgery that was mis-sold to patients can also be subject to medical negligence claims. This can be one of the fields of medicine where claims are most common, due to its rapid growth in recent years and the wide variety of people practicing it.
These cover the most common types of medical malpractice and negligence the average solicitor in this field will deal with, although there can be other more unusual cases too.
Career Prospects For Lawyers in This Field
Medical negligence law is a field that is highly in demand, and most cities will have a good number of law firms who focus on this area. If you look at some of the best medical negligence firms like The Medical Negligence Experts who are a nationwide company you can get an idea of the size of practice and how often companies like these hire new lawyers and how they operate, which is most of the time on a no win no fee basis.
In general, however, from a career perspective, medical negligence law can be a good choice because it is in demand everywhere in the country and the cases involved can be lucrative.
What Type of Lawyer Is Medical Negligence Suited To?
Medical negligence law is well suited to people who like the idea of working closely one to one with their clients, and with clients who in almost all cases are very deserving of the compensation that they are seeking. For lawyers with a strong interest in ethics, this is also a field where they can make a difference, as the practice of medical negligence law directly feeds into improvements in overall healthcare standards – something which benefits everyone.
Medical negligence law usually sees a member of the public taking on a private or government entity, so this is a style of law suited to people who want to represent individuals rather than organisations.
Is It Interesting?
The bottom line for a lot of people looking for a law specialism is often – after whether or not it is possible to make a good living with it and find work reliably – will it still be interesting after a few years? Well, medical malpractice is a field where cases can be very different, and you never really know what your next claim will be, so if working on cases that can vary from routine, cut and dried claims to ones with more investigation and nuance appeals to you, you will probably enjoy this area of law. It is also a good choice if you are interested in medicine as well as law, as you will learn a lot about the medical world.
Is medical negligence law right for you? If you like what you have seen here, then it may be well worth adding to your list of fields to consider.
