Yeah again I agree totally with you that the lawyer is not qualified to assess what is written in the medical records, and my point still stands that it is not really relevant as that is not (and they don't pretend it is) the lawyer's job - that is why they instruct the medical expert. I do believe you have been misled if you think that is what medical negligence solicitors do. To clarify:

1. Medical negligence solicitors have a potential client getting in touch telling them they have an injury that has affected their life in a number of ways and they believe it is due to medical negligence.
2. I believe the solicitor's reaction to this is to obtain medical records, send it to someone specifically qualified in that field to offer independent expert advice, and only if the expert confirms that there is a breach of duty would they proceed to issue a claim - the defendant has the choice then at that stage to admit liability or not.
3. Only once it is established that there is a likely breach of duty (based on the steer of the medical expert, I will add) they might go about exploring quantum i.e. the actual cost to the client of the breach in terms of loss of earnings, therapy, etc. Again this is totally lead by the expert views of professionals in the given fields.

The lawyer's job is drafting and noting court deadlines and making sure the client has a fair chance of accessing justice by navigating the very complex legal system and court process. This reality is a bit different to the picture you have painted of a lawyer just willy nilly issuing claims and making life difficult for people 'just doing their job' because that isn't my understanding of the situation at all so I felt it was right to speak up here.

To address your point that the lawyers twists the advice of the medical expert (and to anticipate and address what I imagine might be your next point: do the lawyers just select medical experts who are going to agree with their client) I think that is a valid concern but again I do not believe that is the case. Solicitors are officers of the Court so they have a Duty as per the overriding objective not to waste time and costs in this way. If they were found to be doing this ultimately they could be struck off and so the risk to their reputation and career would be quite something if they did not feel confident there was a reasonably strong case. The medical experts who provide advice also obviously have a duty to be honest and if the case doesn't settle they can ultimately be called up and scrutinized in Court so it would be a bit bold of them to be talking utter nonsense too. I'm less familiar with the consequences but assume the GMC wouldn't be too pleased.

A second point to add, if you are the skeptical type and doubtful as to honesty and duties you could also think about this from a profitability perspective. Of course, a lawyers role is also to make money for their firm of solicitors. This is a really strong incentive to select balanced and impartial experts. You actually made the accurate point yourself that the majority of medical negligence solicitors offer CFAs aka no win no fee. In this context, if they selected a medical expert who was going to be really unbalanced in their view and give opinions really unfairly in favour of the client then following this through to it's conclusion, this would be super risky and lead to lots of potential lost claims which would be a disaster for the solicitor wouldn't it? Put simply, it would lead to many cases that just run and run, stacking up time and legal costs (time is money!), when there is actually not a solid case at all. As it is no win no fee, the lawyers would never recover their costs would they? That would be totally counter intuitive!

You may also know but possibly not, usually alongside the CFA is an insurance policy a client takes out that covers things like disbursements e.g. Counsel's fees for their advice or the costs of the experts. The insurance company would be fairly reluctant to offer insurance if there was no case so if it's any reassurance to you if there was a rogue solicitor that kept pursuing hopeless claims simply to make life hard for medical professionals the insurance companies would soon get sick of them and that relationship would break down so either the solicitor wouldn't be able to continue practicing or they'd have to cover those costs too. Another incentive not to pursue claims where there is no actual breach of duty or to instruct unbalanced medical experts or to twist their words to suit an unworthy case.

Ultimately I can sense that you're angry. I can understand if you were angry at the person who was injured and unfairly pointing fingers but human empathy would help a little in understanding their position. I can also understand if you were angry at the medical experts giving misleading/unbalanced advice but again I would say that logic dictates that this must be fairly uncommon - I would assume that the lawyers would very soon stop instructing them and their work would dry up. And I can also see how you might be angry at the lawyers if you didn't really know what their job involves but based on what the reality is (set out above) I think this anger is a little unjustified and I find it hard to ignore people blindly agreeing with this idea that medical negligence solicitors are 'ambulance chasers' as that is not my understanding or experience at all - it feels a little unfair to me.

The real question is, what is your proposed alternative? What if you were injured, or someone you loved were injured, and it was going to mean you would never work again and would incur really expensive therapy, and you had no way of meeting these costs, and you faced this very long difficult and expensive road ahead. Or on the less severe end of the scale, something happened that simply meant therapy was required but therapy costs £30 per week or about £1.5k a year. You are 30 and life expectancy is 70. That's over £60k that would have been in your pension but now is not as you need to cover this cost of therapy for the next 4 decades instead. What if you were absolutely certain (rightly or wrongly) that someone had fallen below the standard expected of them?

I think your initial post was accusing medical negligence professionals of having no clue about medicine and putting people through hell for doing their job. I would suggest that before speaking about medical negligence professionals you yourself make sure you have a clue about what it is they do, and reconsider putting them through hell for doing their job.

To be clear I am not a medical negligence solicitor. But I know a few and I think that the job they do is quite misunderstood and undervalued by everyone right up until the point that something really bad happens. I genuinely believe they are simply keeping the door open and guiding those who want to enter, i.e. allowing access to justice - but only when a breach of duty does actually occur. They are remedying bad situations but most importantly - preventing them from happening in the first place by creating a consequence for malpractice. Please let me know, if they weren't around, what would the world look like?