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Eleven years on: how National Compensation Lawyers began, and where it is going

By Michael Tanner, Managing Principal

National Compensation Lawyers turned eleven this year. For a personal injury practice, eleven years is long enough to have acted for thousands of Victorian families, trained the next generation of lawyers here, and learned what a compensation claim actually asks of the people on either side of the file. It feels like the right point to set down where the firm began, where it sits today, and where it is heading. 

The firm opened on the Tuesday after Easter in 2015. I had left Slater and Gordon the Thursday before, encouraged by a small group of people who believed personal injury law could be practised differently to the model the larger firms were running. My mentor pushed me to have a go. My then-girlfriend, now my wife, and my parents pushed harder still. By the following week I was at a rented desk on Level 12 of 200 Queen Street with a single assistant, Catherine, and a clear view of what the firm needed to become.

The idea was straightforward. A compensation claim is one of the most personal pieces of legal work a person will ever be part of. It should be run by a lawyer the client has spoken to, can call back, and will see through to the end of the matter. The caseload of a principal needs to be small enough for that promise to hold. The firm needed to be built around that constraint, not around scale.

In the early years, that meant trading speed of growth for the quality of what we built. The work came from people who chose to back a firm with no track record, on the strength of personal relationships. Barristers with whom I had built strong relationships, referred files that they could have sent anywhere. Treating doctors and medico-legal consultants made themselves available, returned reports faster than we had any right to expect, and prioritised assessments for clients whose lives could not wait ten months for an appointment. Colleagues at other firms handled our matters pragmatically when our clients sat on the other side of theirs. Each of those relationships was earned one matter at a time, and most of them are still active today.

Eleven years on: how National Compensation Lawyers began - Managing Principal Michael Tanner at his first desk, in a light purple shirt and tie, sitting at a wooden desk covered in legal documents and folders during the early days of National Compensation Lawyers.

Catherine left within the first year to return home to the UK. Sarah, who many of our long-standing referrers and clients know, joined to cover what was meant to be a maternity leave position and has never left. She remains an essential part of how the firm operates.

The firm grew the same way it had begun. Slowly, and only when the work required it. We added a lawyer when the matters demanded a lawyer. We added a support role when a lawyer could not properly serve their clients without one. Eleven years on, we are sixteen staff and seven lawyers, with a leadership group that genuinely runs the practice. In October last year we moved into new offices, designed for the firm we have become and built to carry the firm we expect to be in another decade.

The clearest measure of the eleven years, however, is not in the numbers.

When a client engages National Compensation Lawyers, they speak direct to the lawyer who will run their matter. Not an intake team. Not a paralegal taking down details for someone to call back. The principal on the file is the principal on the phone. If the matter sits with Tom McKinnon, the client calls Tom. If it sits with Amy Caldow, the client calls Amy. If it sits with me, the client calls me. The model is deliberate, it is protected by how we manage our caseloads, and in our experience it is the single thing that most changes a client’s experience of a compensation claim.

The second discipline the firm has held to is that the work does not change with the value of the case. A modest claim is run with the same care, the same pace, and the same depth of preparation as a multi-million dollar one. That standard came from the practitioners who trained me, and it is the standard the next generation of lawyers here are being trained on.

For referrers, the practical commitments sit alongside the model. Files are returned on time. Counsel are briefed properly. Medical opinion is treated as expert evidence, not paperwork. We travel to our clients wherever they are. A Melbourne consulting suite, a kitchen table in regional Victoria, or a hospital ward in Swan Hill. The firm now carries genuine depth across medical negligence, TAC, public liability and WorkCover, with principals who can take primary carriage of any of those matters.

The next eleven years will look different to the last. Regional Victoria is a clear growth lane for the firm. Medical negligence is becoming a larger part of the work. The leadership group will keep widening, and the senior lawyers who joined us early in their careers will take on more of the firm’s direction. The named principal model will not change. The lawyer on a client’s file will be the lawyer they call. That is the firm we set out to build in 2015. It is the firm we are still building today.

To the staff, barristers, treating practitioners, medico-legal consultants, referring solicitors, family and friends who have been part of the eleven years, thank you. The firm is what it is because of you.