Professional negligence
where professional negligence briefs are a mainstay of the set’s practice.
Barristers involved in this field deal with claims against professionals such as architects, accountants, solicitors and financial advisers who have allegedly failed to provide services to the level of care and skill which a member of that profession would be expected to demonstrate. Clinical negligence is a type of professional liability that involves disputes between patients and healthcare providers (usually doctors), centring on quality of care. Defendant professionals will usually have indemnity insurance against such claims. Starting off on a law course at Merton College, Oxford, Shail Patel wasn’t sure he’d made the right choice. After a term he tried to switch his field of study to English literature, but as it happens the old stereotype of the sanctimonious English don sometimes rings true, and ultimately things didn’t work out. “I think they were happy to see me leave!” he laughs. “So it was down to carrying on with law at Merton or doing English somewhere else – which didn’t seem like a great option – so I decided to stick with law, and I’m glad I did in the end, because I started to get the hang of it a little better.” As the course progressed, he also started to enjoy it more, and after attending several law fairs and speaking to barristers, he grew ever more enticed by the “intellectual aspects” of the law. So despite the initial diversion, academia’s loss proved to be the legal profession’s gain. After the comparatively easy-going university years, plus a stint at Harvard where he obtained an LLM (and sightseeing in the US also featured prominently), Shail describes his pupillage at Fountain Court Chambers as “a fairly tough experience – suddenly having to show up at 8:30am in a suit every day, after two years of being a student, was quite a challenge”. But the experience was nonetheless “very interesting and stimulating” and put him in good stead to thereafter take a tenancy at 4 New Square,
Always a story unfolding A subset of commercial litigation, professional negligence typically comprises only a part of a barrister’s caseload, alongside contractual disputes, construction work and instructions involving financial services providers and insurers, among other things. But having dipped a toe in English literature while an undergraduate, Shail enthuses over the narrative thrill and personal side of professional negligence cases: “Unlike some commercial litigation, there’s always a story – whether it’s some transaction or litigation that’s gone wrong, or some fraud that accountants have failed to uncover – there’s usually some human interest behind it all. With certain types of commercial litigation you’re basically just staring at a contract all day – which is a different intellectual challenge, but not something you can really talk about at a dinner party! Professional negligence work often involves some element of human interest and human or business endeavour.” As a practice area, it offers both range and depth. “One interesting thing is that you’re tasked with mastering someone else’s professional discipline. Whether it’s an accountant, surveyor, architect or insurance broker, you need to have a mastery of how they should be doing their job and what Unlike some commercial litigation, there’s always a story – whether it’s some transaction or litigation that’s gone wrong, or some fraud that accountants have failed to uncover – there’s usually some human interest behind it all
For more chambers that work in this practice area, please use the ‘Pupillage index’.
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