Accident at work
Brain injury
Claims against injury lawyers
Clinical negligence
Criminal injuries
Fatal accident
Head injury
Road accident
Spinal cord injury
Trip or slip
About John McQuater
APIL Secretary and Partner at Atherton Godfrey LLP
John McQuater qualified as a solicitor in 1983 and is a partner at Atherton Godfrey LLP, Doncaster, where he is the head of litigation with overall responsibility for the personal injury, clinical negligence, employment and dispute resolution teams.
He is a member of the Law Society Clinical Negligence Accreditation Scheme and a member of the Law Society Personal Injury Accreditation Scheme (as well as being an assessor for that scheme).
He is an APIL Accredited Clinical Negligence Specialist, an APIL Accredited Brain Injury Specialist and an APIL Accredited Fatal Accident Specialist (also being an assessor for each of those schemes).
He is a solicitor advocate, with rights of audience in the Higher Courts for all civil proceedings.
He is a member of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, with accredited status as a senior fellow.
He was elected to the APIL executive committee in 2005, he was the APIL president from 2009 to 2010, then re-elected to the executive committee in 2012 before being elected as the APIL secretary in 2016.
He is also a member of the Forum of Complex Injury Solicitors, the Professional Negligence Lawyers Association, the Law Management Section of the Law Society, the South Yorkshire Medico-Legal Society and the Solicitors’ Association of Higher Court Advocates.
He was appointed to the Civil Procedure Rule Committee in 2019 and to the Law Society Civil Justice Committee in 2020.
He provides professional training on a range of subjects including procedure, practice management, occupiers’ liability, contributory negligence, clinical negligence and evidence as well as regular updates on developments in the law. He has chaired sessions, and spoken, at many conferences including the APIL annual conference, the APIL clinical negligence conference, the APIL catastrophic injury conference and the APIL business conference.
Media work includes the BBC Daily Politics Show, BBC Look North, BBC Radio 4, local radio and Talk Radio.
He is the author of ‘Model Letters for Personal Injury Lawyers’ and the ‘APIL Guide to Personal Injury Claims Procedure’. He is also a contributor to the APIL Guide to Clinical Negligence, the APIL Personal Injury Law, Practice and Precedents and the 5th Edition of Medical Negligence by Michael Jones.
He has had articles published in the Journal of Personal Injury Law, the Solicitors Journal, the New Law Journal, the Legal Executive Journal, Modern Claims Magazine, Bone & Joint 360 and The Times.
He is the deputy case digest editor, and on the editorial board, of the Journal of Personal Injury Law (published by Thomson Reuters).
He received the degree of LLB in 1979 and in 2007 was awarded the degree of LLM in Advanced Litigation and Dispute Resolution.
In 2001 he received the APIL Newcomer Trainer of the Year award, in 2011 was named Eclipse Proclaim Claimant PI Lawyer of the Year and in 2017 and 2018 shortlisted for Partner of the Year in the Yorkshire Legal Awards.
He has been described in Chambers UK Guide as maintaining “an excellent reputation in both clinical negligence and personal injury matters” and as being “an encyclopaedia of up to date law and procedure”. He has been described as “widely rated” in the Legal 500. He is highly recommended in Chambers UK as well as being in the Legal 500 list of “Elite Leading Lawyers”.