> Does anyone have any experience of working with these Medicolegal
> "booking agencies" such as "The Registration Council of
> Medical Experts" or
> "Expert Witness". Both are marketing heavily at the moment
> and are happy to
> take a sizable registration fee to put you on their database.

Lawyers tend to use the UK Directory or the Law Society Directory (for
specialised stuff), to use the people whose reports they've seen or
(increasingly) to use agencies. A lot of it seems to be down to how well
your secretary gets on with their secretary. I think that a lot of these
directories that get sent out tend to get binned, a bit like ads from drug
companies are- the company makes its money from people paying to have their
names in them regardless of whether it generates any work. And there are a
huge number of directories around these days. With what seems to be a harder
sell from their salespeople.
No harm though in trying one of these out for a year to see whether it
generates any work- getting your first hundred or so instructions takes a
bit of time, but once lawyers start to see your reports doing the rounds,
work picks up (if your reports are good). But your registration fee has to
be viewed as very much speculative money.

> Couldn't our notes
> be copyright
> making use by third parties for financial gain subject to a
> fee such as
> authors or songwriters get?

I don't think they can (they're property of the Secretary of State, not our
property and the patient has a statutory right of access to them).

> I suspect that before long accreditation will come in.  Also
> the introduction of the SJE (Single Joint Expert) has halved
> the medical input.

I think most lawyers these days are looking for evidence of CPD with regard
to expert work- certainly for the clinical negligence cases, although maybe
less so for the SJE personal injury work in fast track cases (where fast
cheap reports from the 'report factories' with a low likelihood of
questioning or court appearance are sometimes preferred). I know that a few
companies these days are commissioning personal injuries reports from GPs (a
lot more competition for business there, so the rates offered can be quite a
lot lower).

I'm interested in your comments about SpRs doing reports. Strikes me that
this might just about work for SJE work (kind of similar to disability
assessment doctors), but if it came to court, a barrister could make a real
meal out of a report being done by someone still in training if it went
against the report of a fully trained doctor.

I agree with Adrian that it's not a good idea to dabble- the 'fixed costs'
of a medicolegal practice in terms of books, courses and time to keep up to
date (on the legal side) are pretty high, and the hourly rate for work not
all that high if you want to make a good job of your reports, are slow due
to inexperience and don't attract high fees due to lack of a reputation.
Courts are increasingly disallowing reports that don't comply with CPR these
days (as they are supposed to be), which looks bad for you, but can be
pretty devastating for a claimant who loses a good case due to a poorly
written report.

Matt Dunn
Warwick


This email has been scanned for viruses by NAI AVD however we are unable to
accept responsibility for any damage caused by the contents.
The opinions expressed in this email represent the views of the sender, not
South Warwickshire General Hospitals NHS Trust unless explicitly stated.
If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender.