A former nurse who changed careers to become a lawyer has been elected to a top role at a national legal campaign organisation.
Anne Kavanagh is a personal injury lawyer who specialises in clinical negligence cases, particularly representing women and children injured through maternity or gynaecological treatment.
Anne, who is a partner at Irwin Mitchell in London, has been elected to the executive committee of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL).
She qualified as a solicitor in 1998, having previously worked as a nurse for 10 years. She decided to swap careers after becoming interested in issues around patients consenting to treatment. She funded her legal studies by continuing to work as an agency nurse across London.
“I’m thrilled to be appointed to the executive committee at APIL. I’m proud to be a personal injury lawyer as my job allows me to make a real difference to injured people’s lives,” said Anne.
“Victims of clinical negligence need compensation to help them get their lives back on track. They are also seeking answers about what went wrong with their care. It’s my job to ensure they get those answers.
“I’m looking forward to playing my part in APIL’s campaign work. Successive governments have introduced policies that have undermined people’s access to justice and the principle of 100 per cent compensation. Access to justice and compensation enable better recoveries, help get people back to work, and reduce the dependency on welfare payments,” she said.
“APIL lobbies policymakers to always put injured people first when drawing up legislation, and to not treat them as an inconvenient burden. No-one expects, or asks, to be seriously injured, but the reality is it could happen to any one of us, and the law is there to help us should we need it,” she added.
Anne won the Law Society’s Excellence Awards across Private Practice for her work on behalf of injured women and children in 2021. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time with family, gardening, and reading.