Law firm Charles Russell has announced it is pulling its clinical negligence work and will be scaling down its personal injury department after most members of the team left the company for its competitors.
The firm blames several incidents of staff poaching for the decision, with its joint clinical negligence chief, Grainne Barton, moving to Penningtons in June, just a year after she had joined.
Back in May, another clinical negligence specialist, Richard Vallance, defected to join Field Fisher Waterhouse, along with co-worker and partner Edwina Rawson and three other associates from the team.
After these staff members left, the leader of the clinical negligence team, Amanda Stevens, resigned in July. She said, “I was the only partner by the time I came to leave and there are limits to what you can do. It makes it easier if you’re surrounded by personal injury lawyers.”
 Stevens is the former president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers.
As a result of the staff raids, a spokesperson for Charles Russell simply stated, “We’re not going to do clinical negligence anymore.” 