Medical negligence specialists aim for the top with new brand

Pryers Solicitors, based in York, is aiming to become the biggest stand-alone medical negligence firm in the country with the launch later this month of its new 'Axiclaim' website and brand.

Senior partner Ian Pryer said the two-partner practice had 26 solicitors and other fee-earners working on medical negligence cases.

'We have as many clients around the country as we do in Yorkshire,' he said. 'The northern market is important to us, but it's the national market we're aiming at. We want to be the biggest stand-alone medical negligence practice in the country.

'We've done national work for the last ten years, but we've not had a brand which sits comfortably alongside us.'

Pryer said he hoped the new brand would help the firm increase its fee-earners from 26 to 50, and double the number of medical negligence inquiries it received from 350 to 700 a month.

The practice also plans to open a second office in Newcastle by the end of this year.

'A lot of claims management companies which dominate the referral market harvest and farm their work through the internet. We recognise that we need to compete with that.

'Consumers are more comfortable contacting non-solicitors, than going straight to solicitors.'

'Axiclaim', developed in association with Furlong PR, will have its own reception area, which features prominently on the new website.

The website had its 'soft launch' last month and is to be formally launched, with marketing and advertising, by the end of this month.

Pryer said medical journalists had been recruited to write news stories for the site, under the heading 'In the Loop', to help the site become 'a resource where people can access information about medical problems'.

Pryer said that the firm would continue to work with a couple of claims management companies as long as they complied with the ban on referral fees, although the rules were not due to be finally drafted until March, a month before the ban comes into force.

He added that the firm had ten staff working on general personal injury cases, but had seen 'the writing on the wall' and had moved more and more towards medical negligence and product liability cases, such as the ASR hip implant litigation.