Becoming an Expert Witness
How do you register as an expert witness?
· Being an expert witness isn’t (at least for the moment) like qualifying as a doctor, where you have to be accepted by a specific organisation.
· Being an expert witness describes your relationship to the court.
· You are not an ordinary witness.
· The court accepts that you have a skill (or have acquired knowledge) that the average person doesn’t have – so you are expert in this.
· In the first instance your instructing solicitor recognises you as an expert witness.
· Or you may define yourself as being an expert witness – and offer your work on those terms.
· Being an expert witness of course means you have increased responsibilities to the court – but also that you are entitled to be paid for your work (whereas an ordinary witness can’t be paid).
Do I need to be accredited?
· There isn’t really a difference between “being registered” and “being accredited”: so the answers above will apply.
· Expert witness organisations (see below) do accredit experts on the basis of solicitors' references. I suspect that the criteria used by solicitors are not technical skills but are more about whether you produce reports on time, are you honest and self-questioning?
· Increasingly of course courts are deciding who is and who is not going to be expert enough in a specific area - and this is clearly the case with lipreading (vide the Court of Appeal judgement in Luttrell et al.).
Which expert witness organisation should I join?
· First let’s be clear what the purpose of such organisations might be for you:
· They can provide publicity – most organisation have printed and web-based lists of experts. Whether this is a reliable method of getting work is something you will have to judge.
· They provide advice to you on your role as an expert witness. When you start writing reports you will find this useful as you need somebody to ask (you can’t always ask the solicitor because you have a contract with them…and of course a lot of the problems are about solicitors!!). I have rarely (have I ever) picked up the telephone to ask a question BUT I have read my organisation’s magazine very carefully.
· They may provide training (but most training is open to members and to non-members of expert witness organisations).
· Penny Cooper and David Wurtzel gave you this list of organisations:
1. The Academy of Experts
2. The Council for the Registration of Forensic Experts
3. The Expert Witness Directory
4. The Society of Expert Witnesses
5. The UK Register of Expert Witnesses
6. Register run by Sweet & Maxwell.
· You can join more than one (Deafworks is listed on 5 and 6).
· I suggest you contact each and weigh up the issues about:
publicity
advice
training.
How do you receive work?
Expert witness work in general comes in two main ways:
(1) word of mouth
· If lawyers, police etc find you to be good (in the various aspects of the professional role), they will recommend you.
· Other lipreaders will recommend you as well (when they have too much of their own work on hand).
· And the same people will eventually come back and use you again, obviously.
(2) registers
· These are covered in the previous question.
· There are several registers which you can join: these have an annual subscription of about £200 + VAT each.
· People commissioning expert witness work certainly use the registers but I've never managed to work out what system each one employs!!
· When you next have a solicitor guest-speaker on this course, ask him how he finds his expert witnesses.
How much should I charge?
· There is no straightforward answer to this question.
· Most fees are in practice paid by the Legal Services Commission (LSC) who manage Legal Aid: and the LSC will have its own ideas about how much to pay you.
· You have to develop a clear view of how much you will ask per hour for your work: but also the minimum you will be prepared to do the work for – because you can be certain that the LSC will try to pay you less if they possibly can.
· Generally solicitors will be on your side, but beware as anything you put in writing to your instructing solicitor is likely to be copied to the LSC.
Do I need insurance cover?
· Yes, professional indemnity insurance cover is a good idea.
· We use a high street insurance broker to obtain this cover as it is quite specialised: he sources a Lloyds underwriter to arrange the cover for us.
· Be honest with the insurance company: they will ask YOU to tell them what the main risks are. So, think, what is the worst case scenario (in general terms) if you get your lipreading wrong? Will you for example always insist in your reports that lipread speech is not sufficiently reliable to use as the main evidence in a case? What could go wrong – and would be your responsibility?
· But also be clear just what you need indemnity over – don’t overstate the area for which you need protection. I know for example that Deafworks’ insurance is high because as well as giving advice about lipreading we also give advice about deafness – and (to an insurance broker) deafness = medical = potentially large legal costs = high insurance premium.
Do you need a second lipreader to double-check your work?
· If you haven’t come across this argument, you certainly will do!
· This is my view:
· In an ideal world this is of course a good idea – two heads are better than one.
· But you will find the person who pays the bill (the LSC) won’t want to pay two people if they can only pay one.
· The position will change when a judge makes a ruling and says that one lipreader isn’t enough – but this hasn’t happened yet to my knowledge.
Nicholas Callow : May 2008
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