New head of legal services

The MDU’s in house legal department, which supports dentists and doctors facing negligence claims, complaints to the GDC and GMC and criminal investigations, was first established by Charles in 1993. From a team of two solicitors, there are now 30 lawyers and 12 support staff.

Charles commented:

“The dento and medico legal environments have changed significantly during my 22 years as head of department. In the early years, most of our work was in dealing with clinical negligence claims but with the increased number of GDC and GMC investigations, we now spend more time supporting members with regulatory investigations. This is partly due to the special expertise needed to deal with these investigations along with the importance to our members of such cases when their career may be in the balance. We have developed a skillset to enable all our members’ needs to be met.

“We now train our own solicitors and my proudest achievement is the quality of the team we’ve established and their devotion to providing not just legal but moral support to dental professionals and doctors at such a difficult time.”