Please describe your career to date.
I completed the LPC at the College of Law and then secured a training contract at IBB Solicitors in West London. Here I carried out placements in childcare, property litigation, commercial property/residential development and personal injury. The ability to try such a wide range of practice areas really helped to inform my decision about which area I wanted to specialise in.
After qualifying as a solicitor in 2008, I moved to Irwin Mitchell where I practiced in serious injury and sexual abuse litigation for almost nine years.
Taking the experience I had, I moved to Leigh Day in 2017. Leigh Day are a prominent firm in high value serious injury claims and their ethos of protecting the vulnerable was a natural fit with my values. I now represent clients who have sustained life-changing injuries and work proactively to ensure they receive the rehabilitation they need as early as possible, including interim payments to prevent financial hardship and to cover costs of equipment, care and therapies.
What has been the most interesting or exciting experience in your work?
This is a fast paced and high-profile area. There’s a sense of achievement when clients receive the compensation they rightly deserve, but mostly it’s about ensuring that justice is served for victims and families of victims so that to some degree, they can receive closure.
Every client is so unique and affected by their injury in such a personal role. One of the parts of my job I love the most is getting under the skin of what that person’s life would most likely have been like if the injury had not happened, including their profession. As a result, over the years, I have had to learn about all kinds of careers from being a self-employed builder to a world class sculptor.
Notable moments in my career to date have included representing several victims and families affected by the Croydon Tram crash, securing funding for a fully adapted home for a severely brain injured client and seeing the benefits of a state of the art prosthetic leg for an amputee client.
It’s cases like this that make my job so rewarding and the hard work worth it, providing the security for these families to be able to rebuild their lives.
In what ways did your time at King’s influence you?
My time at King’s was a great foundation for my legal career. As well as my law degree, teaching me the principles of law that underpin everything we do, I still refer to some of those tort cases now! University life in general taught me key skills of organisation, self-discipline and encouragement to pursue a career in law. I still regularly walk past the library on the way to the High Court and have fond memories of many hours spent reading and photocopying. Being the secretary of the student Law Society was a great lesson in team-work and creativity – I remember cutting out by hand and laminating about 100 membership cards!
What advice would you give to students and alumni for success in life after King’s?
If you are interested in pursuing a career in law, I would recommend getting as much experience as possible in different areas of law. It is easy to be solely focussed on corporate and commercial firms but there are many other specialisms which are incredibly interesting and rewarding and which could fit your skill set.
You can find out more about Laura’s work here.