What should have been a routine operation left the patient, a woman aged in her thirties, incontinent. Frances Letchford knew immediately that the hospital had blundered because she was able to draw on a priceless asset for a lawyer - she worked as a nurse for 18 years. "Because of my medical background, we built a case that showed the woman never consented to an operation that carried risks," Frances said. "She was awarded damages of £120,000."

Frances completed her nursing training in the QARNNS (Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service). She has worked in military sick bays and in civilian intensive care units before completing a degree in management and qualifying as a solicitor. She specialises now in clinical negligence, the branch of the law that deals with medical mistakes, from fatal delays in diagnosis to harmful treatment.

Her clients come from across the medical spectrum - cancer patients, asthmatics, a firefighter injured on duty, a mother wrongly treated in childbirth, an orthopaedic patient whose knee operation in a private clinic went wrong.

Frances lives in the Quantocks and spends her spare time walking.