Legal Counsel Jolanta Budzowska, partner at the BUDZOWSKA FIUTOWSKI and PARTNERS. RADCOWIE PRAWNI law firm based in Krakow. She was entered on the list of legal counsels in 1996. For many years she has been dealing with civil matters in the field of patient rights and claiming damages for personal injury, in particular due to medical negligence. She boats some of the highest awards in favour of personal injury victims in the history of the Polish judicature. She was and is the plenipotentiary of aggrieved patients in several hundred civil proceedings pending before the Courts in Poland. Her experience also includes handling personal injury cases which cross-border elements. She represented – and still represents – several foreign clients who had the misfortune of sustaining injuries whilst in Poland. Apart from being an active attorney in personal injury cases, both domestic and cross-border, she also provides legal advice on Polish law to foreign entities. Such advice is most often provided upon the instructions of foreign law firms who represent clients that were injured on the territory of Poland, but reside in another Member State, and decide to pursue their claims there. A vast majority of such requests come from British law firms that represent clients injured either in road traffic accidents that occurred in Poland, or in Polish hospitals (medical negligence). As a result she cooperates with multiple British law firms on a regular basis, which includes not only pre-trial advice, but also preparing expert reports on the Polish law for British courts, as well as testifying in court as an expert witness on Polish law . She is a member of multiple international organizations. Since 2009 she has been a board member of the Pan-European Organisation of Personal Injury Lawyers (PEOPIL), which is based in Birmingham, United Kingdom. In 2010 on behalf of PEOPIL, and as a result of public consultations, she provided her expert opinion on a draft of a Polish bill, the aim of which was to introduce significant amendments to the Patient Rights and the Patient Ombudsman act. Furthermore, she is a member of The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) which is based in Nottingham, United Kingdom. This membership allows her, among others, to develop her knowledge in regard to insurance law in the common law system. She is also a member of the Institute for European Traffic Law (IETL), which connects in particular lawyers that represent the interests of insurance companies. Moreover, she is a member of the American Association for Justice (AAJ). In 2014 she was invited by the National Council of Legal Counsels to join a team tasked with preparing a response in the consultations with the Council of the European Union regarding the future of the European Court of Human Rights. She was, and still is, representing plaintiffs whose cases were, or still are, litigated before this court. Since 1 January 2012 she is also a member of the Provincial Commission in the Małopolska voivodeship, which is one of 16 such commissions that have been established in Poland. The main aim of those commissions is to rule on the matter of medical negligence in a special extrajudicial administrative mode. In the years 2010 - 2017 she was a part of the examination committee for the Polish legal counsel exam in the civil law part. The committee is chosen by the Minister of Justice, and their task is to check and mark the examinees papers from the civil law part of the Polish legal counsel exam, which takes place once a year. She also publishes articles and provides comments to the media on matters related to compensation claims for personal injury, especially in respect of the Polish civil law. In that regard she is also invited on a regular basis to take part in television shows as an expert on Polish law. Moreover she participates in international conferences which concern diverse aspects of personal injury compensation, on a regular basis.