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Consent Law

Case law and regulation,
translated into clinic.

Judgments, consultation responses and claims data are written for lawyers and policymakers. These articles translate them into what a practitioner should actually do on Monday morning, free, referenced, and updated as the law moves.

Scales of justice in flat geometric style
The judgments that decide your consent claims.

Interactive

Two ways to see it, not just read it.

Scroll-driven walkthroughs of how a claim unfolds and how the law got here. Three minutes each, built to work on any device.

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Three articles that cover most of your exposure.

Consent law, incoming regulation, and how claims are actually won and lost. Read these three and you understand the terrain better than most of the sector.

Case Law · 7 min read

Montgomery, ten years on: what material risk means in an aesthetics consultation

The 2015 Supreme Court judgment replaced the reasonable doctor with the reasonable patient, and McCulloch (2023) added a duty around alternatives. What the test actually requires, treatment by treatment.

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Regulation · 6 min read

The England licensing scheme for non-surgical cosmetic procedures: a practitioner's timeline

Traffic-light tiers, CQC registration for the highest-risk procedures, and a realistic timeline from the 2025 consultation response to licences on walls. What to prepare before applications open.

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Claims · 6 min read

Why aesthetic claims are lost on paperwork, not outcomes

More than a thousand claims at one UK insurer in five years, and the insurer's own view that unclear communication and poorly documented consent drive them, not clinical error. The documentation that changes the ending.

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More articles are in preparation, including consent in ophthalmology and oculoplastics, record-keeping standards, and complaint first-response. Join the waitlist to be told when each one publishes.

Case law, explained

The judgments that decide your consent claims.

We have split them the way a medico-legal expert does: the authorities relied on today, and the older cases that show how the law got here. Each is written in plain English.

In use today

Consent · [2015]

Montgomery

The patient-centred test that rewrote consent, and what "material risk" means treatment by treatment.

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Standard of care · [1957]

The Bolam test

When a responsible body of opinion protects you, and why it no longer governs how you consent.

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Standard of care · [1955]

Hunter v Hanley

The Scottish standard of care an expert still reaches for, and the three things a claim must prove.

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Consent · [2023]

McCulloch

The most recent clarification: the duty to discuss the reasonable alternatives, including doing nothing.

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How the law got here

Important history, cited rarely in current practice. They explain why consent is now judged the way it is.

Consent · [1985]

Sidaway

The old, doctor-centred consent standard that Montgomery swept away, and why it still lingers in forms.

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Standard of care · [1997]

Bolitho

The logic test that sharpened Bolam, and why your reasoning has to withstand scrutiny.

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Causation · [2004]

Chester v Afshar

Why a warning you did not give can decide a case, even after faultless treatment.

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The Medicolegal Readiness Score

Twenty questions. One number. How ready are you?

A five-minute diagnostic scored across the five pillars of defensibility, consent, records, consultation, complaints and regulation. Free, private, and uncomfortably precise.

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Cleritas Medicolegal Readiness Score

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The waitlist doubles as the Cleritas briefing list. When case law moves, when the licensing scheme takes its next step, when new templates and events launch, you hear first.

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