In her new role, Ms Caines will focus on road accident compensation. She will work remotely, servicing clients in south-east Melbourne.

Polaris Lawyers is the brainchild of Nick Mann, who up until recently was the Victorian head of medical negligence at Slaters. He unveiled his own personal injury law firm last month with the hopes of providing a different kind of service to these clients.

“I took some extra time in the planning stage because I wanted to challenge my own preconceptions about the way that personal injury law has been practiced and how it might change. This meant speaking with a wide range of people, both inside and outside the law: legal experts from both defendant and plaintiff camps, health experts, creatives and innovators, past clients and people who had had no direct experience with lawyers,” he said while speaking to Lawyers Weekly about his new venture.

“Those discussions are ongoing, but have already resulted in some ideas which are ‘radical’ only in the context of a traditional personal injury firm structure. As small examples, an appointment with a Polaris lawyer can be booked directly from our website. Our firm will be paperless, and our lawyers will work remotely and flexibly. I think that the benefits to this approach are multifaceted, and will hopefully be of benefit to our clients. For us, that is just the start, but we want to make sure that the changes we introduce have the support of the people we work with, and seamlessly deliver benefits to our clients.

“In turn I’ve recruited a small team who share the belief that the way we practice personal injury law not only can change, but must change if we are to engage with clients in a way that works for them.”