A serious accident changes life in a moment. You may be the person injured, trying to take in what has happened through pain, medication and exhaustion. Or you may be supporting someone you love, managing hospital visits and family logistics, afraid of making a mistake. Either way, practical and legal decisions come quickly.

We are often called at this point. Some clients contact us while still in hospital, and it is never too early to get clear advice and put a realistic plan in place. Others speak to us at a later stage, including well into an existing claim.

Who we act for

We act exclusively for people with serious, life-changing injuries. This is all we do.

The injuries we handle include:

• Spinal cord injury
• Brain injury
• Amputation and limb loss
• Complex orthopaedic trauma
• Serious burns.

The early stages of a serious injury claim

Below are some of the questions people ask most often in the early days after a serious injury:

• How will I pay for care, rehabilitation, equipment or home adaptations?
• What support can be put in place now, rather than waiting for the case to finish?
• Which decisions need to be made now, and which can wait?
• If there is a settlement, will it properly protect my future or leave gaps that cannot be fixed later?

We work through all of these with you.

What most people need first is stability. We can often obtain interim payments and rehabilitation funding from the defendant faster than you might expect, sometimes within weeks. Where the defendant declines or delays, seriously injured people can be left waiting for the funding they need to rebuild their lives. To help our clients in that difficult situation, we have a ground-breaking scheme, Stewarts Advance, through which you may be able to access up to £50,000. This gives you real control over your treatment rather than waiting for the legal process to catch up.

We also seek an early admission of liability from the defendant, so you can plan with greater certainty. We know that care, equipment and housing adaptations cannot wait for a settlement that may be many months or years away.

We coordinate specialist case management, keeping your treatment and support on track from the start.

Alongside the legal work, our pro bono team provide free legal support in relation to subjects such as housing, debt, benefits and Powers of Attorney. If you are not sure whether this applies to you, ask us when you get in touch.

Our approach

You will most likely only settle once, and the outcome has to cover the rest of your life. We build each case around that reality from day one.

That means gathering evidence early, instructing the right experts and keeping the case moving even where liability is disputed. The vast majority of cases settle before trial, but experience shows defendants offer better terms when they can see that a claim is fully prepared for court, so we build every case with a trial in mind from the start. If yours does reach a courtroom, we will be ready, and you will have received guidance and support throughout.

These cases can run for years, and we will not push for speed at the expense of your future. We deal with the legal complexity so that you are not managing a court case on top of everything else.

Our lawyers typically handle only eight to 12 cases at a time, compared to other firms where that figure may be 40 or more. This gives us the time to understand you and your family, and to prepare your case for a settlement that will last your lifetime. The solicitor working on your case will be a genuine specialist in life-changing personal injury claims and will be able to draw on the collective expertise of our market-leading team, many of whom have decades of experience of running claims like yours.

The goal is an outcome that lets you live as full and as active a life as possible. Not one that simply closes the file.

Our results

In 2025, 33 of our clients received damages awards of £1m or more. Together they received £205m in compensation.

Over the past decade, we have recovered over £1.4bn in damages for seriously injured clients, and secured over £144m in interim payments for those clients.

We have secured the largest periodical payments award in UK legal history. Our record single settlement stands at £41.7m.

What others say

We have been top ranked for personal injury in both Chambers and the Legal 500 for  over 25 years and have been listed in the Times Best Law Firms report for the last six consecutive years.  Our team won Personal Injury/Clinical Negligence Team of the Year at the Chambers UK Awards in 2025.

Getting in touch

You can speak to us whenever you are ready. You may be at the very start, still trying to make sense of things. Or perhaps you already have a claim underway and you feel your solicitor is not giving you the specialist advice your case requires. We always offer a free initial consultation so that you can understand whether you have a claim and what it would involve.