Francesca O'Neill

Practice Areas

Francesca is highly ranked by both major legal directories across 3 practice areas: clinical and professional negligence, and personal injury. They say she “is an absolute pleasure to work with. She takes a robust yet commercial approach to her advice and is a fearless advocate” known for ”powerful and clever advocacy, capable of blowing other advocates out of the water”.

Her practice is chiefly focussed on the negligence liability of both professionals and public authorities. These include the most complex clinical negligence cases, multi-million pound claims in respect of lawyers, architects and surveyors, and high profile cases examining the extent of public authorities’ duties. Francesca has particular expertise at trial and contested hearings and often appears unled in the High Court and against Silks. She is an accredited advocacy trainer for Inner Temple.

In 2023, she was appointed a part-time Judge of the First-tier Tribunal, sitting in the Health and Social Care Chamber.

Francesca is the author of Thomson Reuter’s Practice Note on lawyer’s scope of duty and has a particular interest in the nature and extent of the duty of care.

Francesca is appointed to the Attorney-General’s Panel of Counsel and is instructed by the Government in a wide range of cases.

Professional Memberships

Francesca sits on the Bar Council Women’s Retention Committee. She was appointed to sit on the Inner Temple Bar Liaison Committee, and is a member of the PNBA, PNLA, and LCLCBA.

Personal

She has two young children and a cat, who frequently drive her bananas.