Sarah Reid BL

Sarah is a Junior Counsel with over a decade of experience in law from both a procedural and academic perspective. She advises and represents individual as well as corporate clients and has a civil law practice focused in medical negligence and medical devices.  Sarah also works as a legal advisor to the public sector, advising government departments and local authorities on judicial review exposure as well as offering legal training in this area.

State appointments:

In 2015 Sarah was appointed to the Oireachtas Banking Inquiry as advisory legal counsel and she was again appointed in 2018 to provide legal advice to the Oireachtas Committee on the 8th Amendment. Sarah was appointed as a Tribunal member to the Valuation Tribunal by Minister Eoghan Murphy in 2018 for a 5 year term.

Experience:

Sarah has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in litigation and is keenly aware of the need to understand the perspective of the person sitting on other side of the courtroom. She is very detail oriented in her practice and employs a suite of practice management tools and research updates to ensure she is consistently proving clients and solicitors with high level advice.

Lecturing

Sarah has lectured various legal subjects in DIT and RCSI. In 2019 Sarah was made an associate professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering in Trinity College Dublin (TCD) where she teaches Product Liability law to Biomechanical engineering students and is part of the TCD Forensic Engineering Group Forensic Engineering – Department of Mechanical, Manufacturing & Biomedical Engineering – Trinity College Dublin (tcd.ie)

Skills

Sarah has strong communication and analytical skills and appears regularly at conferences speaking on medical law topics. Through her lecturing, she has honed her ability to convey information in a clear and accessible manner and has used this to adapt her advocacy skills over the past year with online platforms replacing traditional ‘in-person’ litigation.

Currently Sarah is acting in:

• High Court multi-party litigation pertaining to vagina pelvic mesh claims, where she represents women who have suffered injury arising from these implants.
• High Court multi-party litigation pertaining to defective implantable medical devices, where she acts for defendants.
• A series of cosmetic surgery claims, including Botox & other injectable negligence claims, where she acts for defendants.
• Several orthopaedic claims involving missed diagnosis and incorrect post-operative care for patients.
• Several obstetric negligence cases in both the public and private healthcare setting including a test case on the Covid 19 clinical guidelines which led to the late delivery of a child and wrongful death.
• Several PTSD claims for the families of patients who witnessed significant medical negligence and injury arising.
• Medical device claims for a private clinic supplying devices, subsequently alleged to be defective within the meaning of the Liability for Defective Products Act, 1991.

Currently advising:

• Several Local Authorities on miscellaneous issues, including judicial review exposure and obligations that arise from recent legislative developments.
• Several Government Departments on their legislative programmes & policy implementation and she delivers training on the legislative process to staff officers working in the area.

Sarah has authored two practitioner texts since joining the Bar.

Exam Focus: Criminal law was published in 2009 as a student text, to compliment the established Round Hall, Nutshells series. It provided guidance on strategic study, how to approach answering exam questions, including FE1 and Kings Inns exams preparation.

Thereafter Sarah Published ‘The Devils Handbook’, initially with former colleague Sonya Donnelly BL, aimed at junior colleagues embarking on their first year at the Bar. This text provided guidance and useful information, including advice from senior colleagues and tips on effective practice management when starting out at the Irish Bar.

Further details in relation to these texts can be found here: Round Hall > CATALOGUE

September 2021:

CMG claims management conference: Discovery update recap

February 2021:

CMG claims management conference: Failure to Diagnose & Systems liability post Covid

September 2020:

CMG Annual medical negligence conference: Vicarious Liability of private consultants: Morrissey v HSE and beyond

April 2019:
CMG Medical Negligence conference: Legal update 2019

December 2019:

Inspire Med annual Conference: “Acquired Brain Injuries: Legal considerations”.

June 2019:
CMG Annual medical negligence conference: “Cervical Check & beyond”.

April 2019:
CMG Medical Negligence conference: Legal update 2019

March 2018:
CMG Pharmaceutical Litigation Conference : “‘Medical devices as a distinct branch of medical negligence”

June 2017:
St. James Hospital Reducing Medication Errors: “Pharmacovigilence& improving the clinical setting”.

Sarah has acted in an extensive catalogue of cases and has advised on both sides of litigation, giving her a keen eye for potential opportunities to mediate and resolve issues in the case, without the need for litigation.