Leigh Day

Leigh Day is a leading human rights and personal injury claimant firm based in London.

The firm: Leigh Day specialises in many aspects of national and international personal injury and accident work, human rights, clinical negligence, and multi-party actions. Lawyers at Leigh Day are committed to offering an exceptionally high-quality service to all clients. The firm was set up by Sarah Leigh OBE and Martyn Day in June 1987 to represent individual claimants and their families. This remains the firm’s core value as it continues to grow across all departments.

Types of work undertaken
Personal injury: The team acts for clients who have suffered severe and often life changing injuries. This includes cases of severe orthopaedic fractures, life changing injuries such as limb loss and brain and spinal injuries and representing a very large number of bereaved families. The cycling team handles hundreds of claims every year and is the exclusive provider of legal support to British Cycling and British Triathlon members.

Industrial disease: The industrial disease team at Leigh Day not only represent clients who have developed an illness, usually from negligent exposure to asbestos in the workplace, but they also have shaped the law through landmark rulings, including from the Supreme Court, which improve the rights of all negligence victims.

Administrative and public law: The has one of the leading claimant judicial review and public law practices in the country.   The firm undertakes a large number of high-profile judicial reviews for charities and civil society organisations including challenges to immigration policy, the roll out of Universal Credit, multiple major infrastructure projects, arms exports, trade policy and failures to prosecute bribery and corruption.  The firm also represents individuals seeking to address wrongs in fields ranging from immigration and health and social care to planning law.

Clinical negligence: The firm has 36 lawyers representing clients who have been injured, or the families of the deceased, through negligence in a healthcare setting. New head of department Suzanne White is a trustee of the Patients Association and the team works with many other organisations campaigning for patient safety across the NHS and in private practice.

Employment: The employment team at Leigh Day represents individuals in the most complex and high value claims covering all aspects of employment and discrimination law. It also acts for around 80,000 supermarket workers in some of the largest equal pay group claims in history, as well as bringing claims challenging discriminatory changes to public sector pensions. The team has also pioneered legal challenges against gig economy employers and continues to represent thousands of gig economy workers.

Environment: The firm specialises in public law challenges to decisions impacting upon the environment as well as tortious claims resulting from exposure to pollution, including radiation, chemicals, pesticides and sewage in the sea.  The firm regularly acts in challenges to major infrastructure projects including Heathrow, Bristol and Southampton Airports,  major road projects including the Stonehenge and rail projects including HS2.  The firm successfully challenged the government’s Net Zero Strategy in 2022. The firm represents Wild Justice, a group led by the naturalist and broadcaster, Chris Packham, frequently litigating to protect wildlife and ecosystem.   The firm also represents communities abroad who suffer environmental damage as a result of the acts of UK based companies, including oil spills in the Niger delta and mining in Zambia.

Human rights: The human rights department offers specialist expertise in a wide range of human rights and civil liberties issues including:  claims against the police, immigration, support for migrants, unlawful detention and false imprisonment, healthcare and social care rights, inquests and bereavement, welfare rights, prisoners’ rights, the abuse of children and vulnerable adults, data rights and confidentiality, planning and the environment. The team has an outstanding reputation for its work in all these areas and has been ground-breaking in its consideration of the impact of human rights on health and social care law.

International: The firm has pioneered legal developments in multi-party cases on behalf of claimants in the UK and overseas, ensuring that large corporations based in the UK face justice in the UK over the actions of their subsidiaries in developing countries. The firm has also been at the forefront of litigation against the UK Government for alleged human rights breaches arising from the UK’s involvement in overseas military operations and the global ‘war on terror’. In addition, the firm has been at the vanguard of modern slavery litigation. The department’s cases emanate from across globe, in particular Africa, Asia, South America and Europe.  Over the past 30 years Leigh Day has provided access to justice to thousands of individuals who would otherwise have gone without redress. The work of the international team has established numerous landmark legal precedents, including Supreme Court authority, on issues as diverse as parent company liability and jurisdiction, the remit of English courts to adjudicate on the UK’s actions overseas, the interplay of UN Security Council Resolutions and the UK’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and the duty of care owed to those serving in the British military abroad. The team’s successes go beyond securing compensation, such as in 2018, obtaining an unprecedented public apology from the UK Government for its role in the ’detention, rendition and suffering’ of its clients Abdul Hakim Belhaj and Fatima Boudchar.

Product liability: The department has been involved in some of the most important product liability cases of the last 25 years. Claims include those against manufacturers of home appliances, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and food products. They have also acted on behalf of claimants injured in clinical trials. They acted for the family of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse who died following an allergic reaction. The high-profile case led to a change in the law on ingredient labelling which is now known as “Natasha’s Law”. The team are currently acting as the joint-lead lawyers, in the emissions defeat device group litigation against Volkswagen in the UK believed to be the largest group action in the UK.