Life in the PI fast lane

Personal injury (PI) law was very much in the government’s target list, until the government found its hands filled with Brexit and the new Lord Chancellor realised the prison estate was in an advanced state of breakdown. The past and unlamented Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling set about taking much of the profit out of PI law, against the background of a steady drumbeat of insurance attacks, press reports of ambulance-chasing paralegals, fictitious passengers, non-existent injuries and scam claims.

So as a practitioner in the field of PI, what is a real story? I run a niche motorcycle litigation firm and I was very gloomy about the future of my area of law in December 2012, as Grayling’s first announcements took shape, but there is most definitely a future for lawyers who wish to practise in the field of PI law.

The changes Grayling introduced killed off a number of firms, particularly those that operate on a referral fee mechanism. The reality is that those firms which previously paid for referral fees are now owned by insurance companies and, in my experience, those firms that are owned by insurance companies are a bad place for any newly qualified lawyer to start his or her career.

Different types of PI firm

PI work can really be divided into three classes. There are the ‘pile it high’ claims processing factories, where client care and professional skill are pretty close to non-existent. Joining up with one of those firms usually involves a desperate period of skill less and inadequate work leaving you with a CV which actively hampers you when you leave that firm. No one is impressed by two years paralegal work at a claims factory. For my firm, working for a claims factory is a negative.

The second area is the huge national professional firms, which have good reputations. They do not need any more publicity, but we all know who they are. They offer decent and supervised training and you will leave your training contract well prepared. The third way, and my way, is to become absolutely expert in one small field of endeavour. I have had – and expect to have for the future – a fulfilling and remunerative career in PI law.

In my small firm of five lawyers, three lawyers are rated in Legal 500, two in Chambers and Partners, four are on the Personal Injury Panel with a fifth one joining, and three of us are High Court Advocates with a fourth taking his advocacy exams. We are regularly in court and we deal with a fair spread of work from quantum disposal trials in front of District Judges to High Court trials, to trust management and road traffic offences.

We are recruiting, but any new recruit going into an ultra-niche firm needs to think of it as a mixed blessing. As a new lawyer you develop deep skills in a limited area with speed. One of my senior associates was noted as a leading practitioner in Chambers after just six years’ admission. What you will lack at the end of your training contract is a wide spread of experience. You will learn well and quickly, but your CV is limited. The upside is you become a very able practitioner very quickly. The downside is you become a highly skilled, but resolutely one trick pony.

Characteristics of PI work

Do not imagine that PI work means being a drudge in a law factory, pressing buttons on a computer in an ever-repeated tedious cycle of processing whiplash claims. If you do find yourself in that kind of work, get out. There is no future, professional satisfaction or respect in that type of work.

If you do PI work properly, you are a problem-solver, ‘a trusted adviser’ (to use an old phrase), or a ‘man of affairs’ (to use an even older phrase), which now thankfully extends to women too. The practice of PI law is changing. Low-value work does not pay as well as once it did, but it certainly pays well enough for decent solicitors to earn a perfectly good living and develop their skills ready for the heavier, more remunerative and technical cases.

In PI work you cannot help but get close to your client. For a period in their lives, you are one of the most important people to them. They are utterly dependant on you in a serious injury claim to do the best you can for them fearlessly, skilfully and putting their interests before yours. In the early days, even in a modest claim, you can be the difference between parents being able to put Christmas gifts under the Christmas tree or not.

If you actually want to help people, do a professional and skilled job and be a regular in court, then PI work is (in the right environment) fulfilling, technical and enjoyable. It is also adversarial, tough and combative, and not for the faint hearted if you want to do a proper job. After 25 years I still enjoy it and I still very much enjoy that I am actually doing some real good for some very vulnerable people.

How to choose a PI firm

A good PI firm will be in Chambers and Partners or the Legal 500. At the very least a supervising partner should be on the Law Society Personal Injury Panel or a senior litigator or fellow in the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers. The Chambers and Legal 500 rating show that the firm is respected in the profession. Membership of the Law Society’s Personal Injury Panel is a marker of a reasonable level of competence and specialisation in PI work.

Also, do your research. If you are offered a job at a firm where the feedback on internet forums and chatrooms relentlessly criticises the firm, then that is not a good environment for you to be in. Bad client care is a terrible indicator. Also do basic checks. If a firm has 300 fee-earners and 10 solicitors, what do you really think your chances are of learning anything or getting a training contract?

If your interview or first couple of weeks reveals stressed paralegals slaving away, pressing buttons on computers, then give the firm a big swerve. That is no career. If that is the best that you can get in a law career, do something else, because you can waste five years of your life in soul-destroying grind in the hope of a training contract that may never materialise. If this mythical training contract materialises, time served in a battery farm with minimal supervision or training means if you do get admitted you will be horribly under-skilled and should probably not be a solicitor.

Andrew Dalton is the senior partner at White Dalton Motorcycle Solicitors.