Why this site exists
Birth Injury Advocate is an alliance between two law firms (Banville Law and The Weitz Firm, LLC), built to answer the questions parents actually ask after a difficult birth. Most of those questions are medical before they are legal: What is kernicterus? What does an HIE diagnosis mean for my baby? Is a newborn skull fracture from forceps ever normal? Parents search for those answers at 3 a.m., from NICU waiting rooms, long before they ever search for a lawyer, and what they mostly find is anonymous content with no named author, no sources, and a lead form.
We built this site to be the opposite of that. Every page here is written in plain language, defines medical terms the first time they appear, and cites primary medical sources: the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the CDC, and peer-reviewed journals. Every page is reviewed by two named, licensed attorneys whose bar admissions you can verify yourself. If you never contact us, and this site only helps you understand what happened to your child, it has done its job.
Two firms, one alliance
Birth Injury Advocate is the shared resource of two firms that joined forces on birth injury cases:
- Banville Law: a New York firm and a Washington, D.C. practice led by Laurence P. Banville, Esq., licensed in New York (ID 4725149, since 2009) and Washington, D.C. (ID 1033393, since 2016).
- The Weitz Firm, LLC: a Pennsylvania and New Jersey firm whose birth injury work is led by Max Morgan, licensed in Pennsylvania (ID 316096) and New Jersey (ID 062552013), with offices in Philadelphia and Cherry Hill.
Why an alliance instead of one big national brand? Because birth injury cases are local. The lawyer who stands up for your child needs to be licensed in the state where the delivery happened, familiar with that state’s filing deadlines and damage rules, and accountable to that state’s bar. A single brand claiming to cover everywhere is usually a referral service wearing a law firm’s clothes. An alliance of two named firms (each with its own identity, offices, and licenses), lets us tell you exactly who would handle your case, and admit it plainly when the answer is “a trusted firm in your state, not us.”
What the two firms share is this site, a common standard for what gets published on it, and a division of labor that follows their licenses: Banville Law in New York and Washington, D.C.; The Weitz Firm in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
How every page is reviewed
Every substantive page on this site is reviewed by both attorneys: Laurence P. Banville, Esq. and Max Morgan, Esq., and carries a dated review stamp. We do not use a medical reviewer, and we won’t rent a physician’s name to look like we do. Instead, we hold every medical claim to a stricter standard: it must trace to a citable primary source, listed in a visible sources section at the bottom of the page. Medical facts on this site come from ACOG, the AAP, the NIH, the CDC, and the peer-reviewed literature, not from other law firm websites.
Our editorial policy explains the full process: how content is researched, how sources are chosen, how review dates work, and how to report an error so we can fix it.
Where we help directly, and where we connect you
We are upfront about licensure, and it is worth spelling out exactly what that means:
- New York and Washington, D.C.: cases are handled by Banville Law.
- Pennsylvania and New Jersey: cases are handled by The Weitz Firm, LLC.
- Federal claims: birth injuries at military hospitals and federally supported clinics proceed under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), a federal law with its own deadlines and procedures. The alliance handles these claims as well.
- Everywhere else: the alliance connects families with its vetted network of local birth injury attorneys: firms we have screened for birth injury experience and trial capability. When your case would be handled by a network firm rather than by our attorneys, we tell you that plainly, before anything is signed.
No law firm is licensed in all fifty states, though many websites are happy to let you assume otherwise. We would rather tell you exactly who would stand up in court for your child.
What we will never do
- No invented numbers. Settlement figures on this site are publicly reported results with source attribution, and every figure traces to a court, jurisdiction, or publication.
- No fake reviews. Client reviews are published only when verified and only with the client’s permission.
- No urgency pressure. Filing deadlines are real, and we explain them factually, but grief is not a conversion lever, and you will never see a countdown clock here.
- No false hope. Not every birth injury is malpractice. Some injuries happen despite excellent care, and if a records review shows that is true in your case, we will say so: at no cost to you.
Have questions about your child’s birth? A free, confidential case review answers them with your child’s actual medical records, honestly, including when there is no case.
If you are just starting, our guides to birth injuries and conditions and the legal process are the best places to begin. You can meet the two attorneys behind this site, and check their credentials, on our attorneys page.