Laurence P. Banville, Esq.

Laurence P. Banville, Esq. is the Managing Partner of Banville Law, a New York personal injury firm with a Washington, D.C. practice, and one of the two attorneys who review every page published on Birth Injury Advocate. Licensed since 2009, he has spent his career representing individuals and families against insurance companies and large institutions. Within the alliance, he handles birth injury cases in New York and Washington, D.C., and federal claims involving military hospitals.

Bar admissions

Laurence lives in Pennsylvania but is not admitted to the Pennsylvania bar. Within the alliance, Pennsylvania and New Jersey cases are handled by Max Morgan, Esq., of The Weitz Firm, LLC, who is licensed in both states.

An early lesson in what an injury case means

Laurence grew up in Ballykerogue, County Wexford, Ireland, a small farming community where his father worked as an all-around tradesman and the family raised pigs and grew potatoes on the side. He picked strawberries and greenhouse tomatoes for local farmers as a boy; the work ethic stuck.

So did something else. When his mother, Margaret, was injured at the furniture factory where she worked, a machine accident that cut her arm, the family brought a workplace-injury lawsuit. That case was Laurence’s first exposure to the law, and it shaped how he understands his clients today: he has been on the family’s side of an injury claim, waiting to see whether the system would treat someone he loved fairly. It is also what turned his parents’ encouragement, and eventually his own ambition, toward a legal career.

Education

Laurence studied at University College Dublin from 2003 to 2008, earning a BBLS (European) (Bachelor of Business and Legal Studies, Law & Business), with first-class honours, the equivalent of summa cum laude. His degree included an Erasmus year at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, where he took law and business courses in French, a language he still speaks at professional working proficiency.

In 2007 he received the UCD President’s Award for Excellence in Student Activities, one of only ten recipients from a student body of roughly 22,000. The award recognized a sabbatical year spent in student leadership: president of the Erasmus Student Network at UCD, national representative for Erasmus Student Network Ireland, and International Officer of the Students’ Union. During university he also interned at Matheson Ormsby Prentice, one of Ireland’s largest law firms, and at the U.S. firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, and completed a 200-mile sponsored charity pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago in Spain.

Legal career

Laurence came to the United States in 2008 as a summer associate at Brown & Connery in Westmont, New Jersey, then passed the New York bar and was admitted in June 2009. He began his career at Wilbraham, Lawler & Buba in Philadelphia (2009–2010), defending products-liability litigation, including asbestos and mesothelioma cases, across Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. That defense-side start matters to his clients now: he learned firsthand how institutions and their insurers evaluate, contest, and price injury claims.

Since January 2015 he has been Managing Partner of Banville Law, the New York personal injury firm he describes as “a bridge to recovery”: helping individuals and families take on insurance and pharmaceutical companies for fair compensation. He was admitted to the Washington, D.C. bar in 2016, which supports the alliance’s work on federal claims, including birth injuries at military hospitals brought under the Federal Tort Claims Act. He is also the owner of Legal Herald, a legal news publication, and a partner at LPB Law Group, a Pennsylvania firm whose Pennsylvania practice is handled by attorneys admitted in that state. Over the years he has co-counseled cases with a number of firms across the region, experience that now underpins how the alliance vets and works with local counsel in states where its own attorneys are not licensed.

Role in the alliance

As co-founder of the Birth Injury Advocate alliance, Laurence reviews every substantive page on this site together with Max Morgan, Esq., checking legal statements against the law of the states where he is licensed and holding every medical claim to the site’s sourcing standards. For families in New York and Washington, D.C., he and Banville Law handle cases directly; for other states, he helps connect families with the alliance’s vetted network of local birth injury attorneys.

Professional memberships

• New York Bar Association
• American Association for Justice
• Irish American Bar Association of New York
• Brehon Law Society
• Irish Network USA
• Irish Network Philadelphia: Founding Chairman (2010)

Awards & recognition

• Irish Legal 100: Irish Voice
• Top 40 Under 40: Irish Echo
• UCD President’s Award for Excellence in Student Activities (2007)
• AVVO Rated Lawyer

Beyond the office

Laurence lives in the Garnet Valley area of Pennsylvania with his wife and their two children, a son and a daughter. He is a lifelong Newcastle United supporter who still travels to England for matches, an adopted Phillies fan, and an active member of the Irish-American community. He was the founding chairman of Irish Network Philadelphia in 2010. His personal philosophy is simple: work hard, treat everyone equally, always add value, be a resource.