The team at Claire Collinson Legal is led by Claire Collinson, a qualified solicitor with over 20 years experience of disputes and litigation. Claire graduated from Leicester University in 1995 with a First Class Honours Degree in Law, obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice with Distinction from the College of Law in York in 1996 and was admitted as a solicitor in 1998.
Claire received various academic prizes including the Leicester University Law Department prize for the best final year student and Leicester Law Society Prize for best graduate of year intending to become a solicitor. Claire worked for Ward Hadaway, a leading regional practice based in Newcastle, between 1996 and 2007, specialising in commercial litigation and became a partner in 2005.
Claire has been ranked in Chambers & Legal 500 for a number of years and has been shortlisted for the 2019 Legal 500 Dispute Resolution Solicitor of the Year.
At Ward Hadaway, Claire dealt with a wide variety of civil disputes for individuals and corporate clients including insurance litigation, financial services related claims, professional negligence actions and contractual disputes. Claire also built up an extensive knowledge and experience of funding options for commercial litigation including after the event insurance and conditional fee arrangements.
The vision for Claire Collinson Legal is to provide top quality legal advice at affordable and proportionate prices thereby enabling greater access to justice for deserving individuals and businesses, an issue which has always been paramount to me professionally.
Since setting up Claire Collinson Legal in 2009, Claire has dealt with a wide variety of insurance and financial disputes including a significant professional negligence dispute relating to investment portfolio management, a large number of disputes with high street banks relating to interest rate hedging products and a variety of commercial and personal insurance disputes.
Claire has received recognition in the independent legal professional guides Legal 500, 2013 and 2014 and Chambers and Partners, 2014 and 2015 where comments include “amazingly knowledgeable and skilled, and has a quick grasp of complex commercial issues” and “an excellent reputation among clients and peers not least for her impressively deep and broad knowledge of how insurance works”. Claire is described as “outstanding” in relation to financial services claims.
