Diane has practised in personal injury law for over 30 years and in that time she’s covered every type of injury.

Currently, Diane’s work is centred mainly around workplace accidents and road traffic accidents. She also undertakes a small amount of what is known as industrial disease work, where injuries arise over a period of time rather than in a single instance.

As the firm’s joint head of personal injury, Diane oversees a team of lawyers, all of whom have responsibility for their own clients and cases. She provides support, mentoring, guidance and supervision in running those cases. The experience within the team varies from the extremely experienced to trainees, Diane adapts her approach to the different levels of understanding and abilities of each team member.

Diane is involved with a number of external organisations aligned to the personal injury work that she specialises in.

• Fellow of APIL (Association of Personal Injury Lawyers)
• Secretary of the Doncaster and District Law Society
• Secretary to the Yorkshire Union of Law Societies
• Sits on the Yorkshire arm of the Access to Justice Foundation committee whose role is to distribute funding to various legal advice providers in Yorkshire.
• Deputy chair of Region 3 (Yorkshire) of the Motor Accident Solicitors Society (MASS).

APPROACH

Diane likes to meet with clients as early as possible in the course of their claim.  Ideally this is face to face but if that's not possible then via a video call or over the telephone.

She believes it's really important to gain an understanding of how the injuries are impacting the life of the client and their loved ones. Meeting with the client also gives the opportunity to properly understand how the accident happened, often when this involves complex machinery or processes.

Diane then works diligently to gather the evidence necessary to ensure the best possible outcome for every client.  This is both financially and also in terms of rehabilitation – to try and get them back as close to their old lives as their injuries allow.

EXPERIENCE

Fox v Foundation Piling Ltd [2011] EWCA Civ 790 – a case relating to Part 36 of the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) still being cited in cases today.