Helen Shakespeare

Practice Areas

Helen is a highly experienced senior serious injury solicitor based in Thompsons Solicitors Leeds office, supervising the Yorkshire and Humberside serious injury team.

Helen specialises in high-value and complex cases involving brain injury, spinal injury, multiple fractures, serious burns, and amputations that are life-changing and catastrophic.

Career

With 19 years’ experience, Helen understands the importance of rehabilitation and therapy to help her clients rebuild their lives after serious injury trauma. Helen will ensure that her clients are provided with therapeutic support, appropriate adaptations, equipment and prosthetics, funded by interim payments.

Helen focuses on getting the right individually-tailored care and rehabilitation package and creating a meaningful plan for her clients’ long-term needs. With access to the best medical advice and evidence, Helen’s clients know they are in good hands.

Helen is sensitive and empathetic, working for both adults and children seriously injured through accidents at work or on the road. With a reputation as a determined litigator who wants justice for her clients, and who pursues cases to gain the maximum compensation in the shortest possible time, Helen has secured millions of pounds for her clients.

Helen shares Thompsons’ ethos and has only ever acted for those who are injured, rather than those who have been responsible for the injuries. She is proud to work for a firm that will fight the challenging cases and issues that other solicitor firms won’t.

Professional Memberships

Helen is a member of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers and the brain injury charity Headway.

Work Highlights

Helen's case experience:

-Secured a settlement for a 32-year-old man who lost a leg in a traffic accident. Collaboration with the defendant's representatives resulted in trialling multiple prosthetics, facilitating an early return to high-level sports. The settlement was reached within 18 months.

-Secured £3.9 million for a motorcyclist who suffered life-threatening injuries when he was involved in a collision with a car, resulting in a non-functioning right arm and significant cognitive and behavioural problems due to a severe brain injury.

-Secured a settlement of £1.1m for a carer who was run over and suffered a life-changing serious brain injury.

-Secured a multi-million-pound settlement for a pedestrian run over by a speeding car while walking their dog, leaving them seriously disabled with significant leg injuries and a severe traumatic brain injury.

-Secured a six-figure sum for a client who had to have his arm amputated due to an accident at work.

-Secured a six-figure award for a refuse collector who could no longer work after having had his leg amputated following extensive injuries from an accident at work.

-Represented an education worker who sustained long-term injuries following an accident at work that meant she could no longer work, recovering substantial compensation.