People sometimes ask why I never moved into something else over the years: corporate, conveyancing, something broader. The honest answer is that this work gives back something other areas of law don’t. It isn’t financial. It’s the privilege of helping someone through a genuine crisis: someone who’s been hurt through no fault of their own, who’s frightened, who’s lost confidence in what’s coming next. The job is to get them to a place where they can move on with their lives. The bond you build with a client when you do this work properly is one of the real rewards of the profession. I’m not embarrassed to say that.

Before Carter & Carter

After qualifying in October 1993, I spent five and a half years at Russell Jones & Walker, Manchester (then one of the country’s leading trade union and personal injury firms, now part of Slater & Gordon), working across the full spread of personal injury claims, including employer’s liability, public liability, road traffic, criminal injuries, and medical negligence.

From April 1999 to September 2006 I worked at Sherrington’s Solicitors in Bolton, the firm where I first crossed paths with David Healey. I was promoted to Salaried Partner there in December 2001. My caseload was multi-track personal injury work, including serious injury claims involving care needs, loss of earnings and pension claims. I also sat on the firm’s CFA panel, deciding which no-win-no-fee cases the firm would back and what the success fees should be. That experience directly informs how I approach fees at Carter & Carter today.

In 2001 I was admitted to the Law Society Personal Injury Panel, and served on it for the following decade.

Why I founded Carter & Carter

By 2006 I had spent thirteen years in private practice, and I’d seen enough of how larger firms handle personal injury work to know it wasn’t how I wanted to practise. Your claim is rarely handled by one person from start to finish. There are layers of paralegals, assistants, and junior solicitors. The partner whose name is on the letterhead may never speak to you directly. Continuity is a problem because turnover is high. By the time your claim concludes, you may have been passed between three or four people, and each time you’ve had to explain your situation again from the beginning.

In 2007 I set up Carter & Carter with a deliberate decision: stay small enough to do the job properly.

Today the firm is two solicitors, me and David Healey, my colleague of sixteen years. That’s it. No paralegals, no trainees, no junior staff. When you call us, you speak to one of us. The person on the phone is the person handling your claim. The person handling your claim is the person who’ll see it through to settlement.

We could have grown. We chose not to. The moment you add layers, you add distance, and distance is the enemy of care.

The work that built this firm

When I set up Carter & Carter in 2007, something I hadn’t fully expected began to happen. Clients started arriving on the doorstep having already been turned away by other solicitors. They’d been told their case was too complicated, too risky, or not worth pursuing. It quickly became clear how many claims were out there that had been rejected on the wrong grounds.

Sometimes a previous solicitor is right that there isn’t a case. More often, they hadn’t been prepared to do the work the case needed, or hadn’t spotted an angle that decades of doing this work makes obvious. Thirteen years in private practice before founding Carter & Carter had given me a wide-angle view of how these claims behave. Sometimes the answer is finding a different argument the previous solicitor missed. Sometimes it’s simply pushing harder on the arguments they’d given up on. Either way, when the merits are genuinely there, the claim deserves to be brought.

We take those cases on. Many of them, case after case, year after year, turn into substantial settlements. That pattern is now a large part of what Carter & Carter does, and a large part of why clients are referred to us by word of mouth.

What I handle

I act for clients across England and Wales on personal injury claims, with particular focus on:

→Food allergy and anaphylaxis claims, including supermarket, restaurant and takeaway cases

→Needlestick and sharps injury claims, including healthcare workers, refuse collectors, council workers, police officers and prison staff

→Accidents at work

→Public liability and accident claims

These are the four areas I focus on at Carter & Carter today. Over thirty-three years in personal injury I’ve handled almost every type of claim there is, from road traffic accidents, medical and dental negligence to beauty claims and sporting injuries. That breadth still shapes how we approach less common cases when they come in.

These aren’t all routine cases. A substantial share of the work involves serious, life-changing injuries.

Why this matters

I know every client we act for by name. When David and I talk through cases over coffee, we know exactly who we’re talking about. That isn’t possible in a firm handling thousands of claims a year. It is possible, and it’s the whole point, in a firm of two.

If you’re thinking about bringing a claim and you’d like to talk it through, call me. There’s no pressure and no hard sell. We’ll either help you, or be honest with you about why we can’t.

One last thing. We wouldn’t be where we are without the clients who, after their claims settled, took the time to write a Google review and help the next person decide whether to call us. Two hundred and fifty five-star reviews. Word of mouth is what built this firm. I don’t forget it, and I’m grateful for every one of them.

Outside the office

I’ve been mountain biking for about ten years, mostly around the Peak District. I’m usually at the back of the group, panting hard and making no obvious progress, but I keep at it.

I also juggle. I learnt it years ago, picked it back up recently, and was surprised to find I could still do it. It’s a good way of switching off.