The pro bono work of lawyers at two City firms has played a key role in the establishment of a new scheme to compensate British victims of terrorism abroad.

Over the last three years, Lovells and Field Fisher Waterhouse (FFW) have been working on a scheme, announced by the government last week, which will enable British citizens injured in terrorist attacks overseas to claim compensation.

The Victims of Overseas Terrorism Compensation scheme will apply to designated terrorist attacks that occur outside the UK, and broadly mirror the existing criminal injuries compensation scheme.

A small group of lawyers at Lovells, led by senior insurance associate Chris Hill, with partner Peter Taylor, and Jill Greenfield, a personal injury partner at FFW, were on the working party along with legislators, victims and their representatives, examining how the scheme could be set up.

They assisted with research, negotiations and the parliamentary progress of the initiative.

Hill said the firm got involved after it was approached by the Humanitarian Assistance Unit of the Department for Culture Media and Sport in 2007, following its work representing victims of the London 7/7 attacks.

‘Terrorists are targeting UK and US citizens, which amounts to an attack against the country they are from. And there was a discrepancy between the treatment of British victims of terrorism injured here and those injured outside the UK,’ he said.

‘We felt this was something that should be addressed and that it was something we wanted to be involved with after helping the victims of the 7/7 bombings.’

Greenfield, who represented one of the families injured in the 2005 bombing in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, said: ‘Anyone who does PI work feels for the injured victims. British citizens abroad are easy targets.

‘There was a disparity in the law and I couldn’t understand why these people weren’t getting any help.’