In How Attorneys Can Best Utilize Their Medical Expert Witness: A Medical Expert’s Perspective, Dr. Vernon M. Neppe MD, PhD, FRSSAf, FAPA, writes that expert witness testimony depends on finding an appropriate match for your case. This excerpt deals with document preparation.
There are costs that are necessary:
Rather obvious is the review of the appropriate medical records. All records that are relevant to the expert’s testimony should be supplied. Sometimes, with key witnesses, this may mean all documents pertinent to the case. Whereas this may not be entirely ideal, pragmatism plays a role. The attorney should be careful whom (s)he chooses for that task, as doing this for five or six experts could easily make costs overwhelming. Generally, in each case, there may be one or two key witnesses. The others may be declared in a limited way and receive all relevant documents for the specific area of expertise only. They should carefully obtain only what is relevant information for the specific declaration. The easiest cost saver is a well constructed file of pertinent pages with indexes as well as a brief summary letter containing only facts, e.g. date of alleged incident, demographics, alleged claims and questions to be answered.
More to follow on assisting civil litigation attorneys with medical experts from Dr. Neppe, Director, Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute, Seattle, WA, www.brainvoyage.com.