David Weatherburn

David specialises in clinical risk, medical malpractice, commercial health, clinical outsourcing, Insurance, Casualty and Professional Liability. He is a member of the DACB LLP and Claims Solutions Boards, and Head of Medical Malpractice.

David has over 30 years’ experience advising clients across a range of sectors including health and social care (NHS/Public Sector) and Insurance. His key clients include NHS Resolution (whom he has acted for since their inception), NHS England, BUPA, Northumbria Healthcare NHS FT, Everest Re, Zurich, RSA.

David’s extensive experience means that clients often look to him for strategic insight and his views on how potential changes in Insurance and Healthcare will impact on their service delivery.

David was previously Eversheds’ Head of Health Advice, Clinical Risk and Injury Risk teams in the North of England from 1995 onwards. He was then Head of Healthcare 2006-2008.

He joined DACB as Regional Senior Partner of the Newcastle office in 2008, and is now the Location Head. He has since grown the office from 30 staff up to nearly 200. Our office is now Newcastle’s 3^rd largest provider (by revenue or headcount) of legal services in the North East. David has been personally involved in many of our larger scale recruitments e.g. the Construction teams from Watson Burton and Casualty Injury team from DWF.

Relevant experience includes:

• The development of the national Medical Malpractice team which is now regarded as market leading and offers a unique lawyer led TPA service for insurers and corporates.

• Advising numerous health and social care corporates on how to reduce the cost of their indemnity spend. David is a specialist in leakage containment and risk avoidance.

• Advising a major charity on transforming their insurance arrangements to include membership of the NHS Resolution Clinical Negligence Scheme, generating significant savings for the charity in their indemnity spend.

• Setting up a cross border TPA scheme for a Lloyd’s syndicate, writing Medical Malpractice covers in UK and Ireland and with ambitions to cover Spain.

• Advising intermediaries on possible reforms to state run insurance for medical accidents in one of the Gulf States.

David is ranked as a Leading Individual by both Chambers and Legal 500. He is a passionate supporter of our corporate responsibility programme where DACB have won Legal Services Provider of the year 2020 for our NHS Youth volunteering programme. In addition, he has appeared regularly as a public speaker sharing platforms with leaders from the NHS, insurance and wider private sectors.