APIL’s incoming president will call upon PI lawyers to help win over “hearts and minds” as the association tackles one of the claimant community’s greatest challenges to date.
“We stand on the verge of the greatest of challenges that we and, more importantly, innocent injured people have faced to their rights and entitlements for many a long day,” Neil Sugarman, of GLP Solicitors in Bury, Greater Manchester, will tell assembled delegates at the association’s annual conference and AGM in Birmingham next week.
“The theme of this conference is ‘Winning hearts and minds’ and that is precisely what we have to do. Help us to show the public, MPs, press, media, even the judiciary that we really do fulfil a genuine holistic function,” he will say.
“It is time to fight back and not let the undoubted power of the insurance industry or a Government concerned purely with the economy, triumph over the rights of injured people, rights which have been around for hundreds of years.
“You must sit in your offices or at home, seething and frustrated. You might be thinking and hoping that APIL and other claimant-based organisations will do what they can and, of course, they will. But we must all try to do more and do it now”.
Neil Sugarman qualified as a solicitor in 1981 and has practised exclusively in the field of personal injury litigation. He has served on APIL’s executive committee since 2005.
Brett Dixon, of specialist personal injury firm Smith Jones in Burnley, will take on the role of APIL’s vice president.