A medical-legal consultant is a physician who provides support to attorneys in cases involving human injury, including auto accidents, workplace injuries, falls, drug-related claims, defective medical devices, or cases of neglect and medical malpractice.
A medical-legal consultant offers much more than an expert opinion. While medical experts testify in court, medical-legal consultants assist in the pre-litigation phase, with the primary objective of achieving a settlement.
The majority of medical legal consultants do not testify in court.
In most cases you don't. Starting with a medical-legal consultant will help you build the case by identifying a broader range of injuries. They can provide detailed recommendations, causation opinions, and analyses on these issues. By investing upfront in a medical-legal consultant, you are maximizing the case value, particularly for the 90% of cases that settle. In fact, the medical legal consultant may help increase your case settlement rate.
The medical-legal consultant will direct you to the appropriate specialist if needed and can help you find an affordable option.
In those 10% of cases that end up going to court, the medical expert will likely rely on the same reputable resources used by the medical-legal consultant, leading to similar conclusions.
These timelines help in a variety of ways. First and foremost it condenses a large record that may be presented out of sequence. I have gotten records that seem like the facility threw them down a set of stairs and then gave them to the attorney. The dates are all over the place. The handwriting is atrocious. There is a ton of irrelevant information in the record. The chronology condenses these records, which could have pages that number into the thousands, into a nice succinct report. It helps clarify what happened and when. It also helps identify if there are missing records and the dates and/or reports that are missing. It provides the attorney with a much more palatable document to read than thousands of pages that may be irrelevant.
This condensed report helps convey to the attorney the sequence of events that resulted in the conclusion about what happened with the case. It gives the attorney something easier to work with, easier to understand, yet with a reference back to the exact page where the information was found for easy reference. Furthermore, it cuts down on the time an expert might have to spend digging through the same record to find what they are looking for. This saves the attorney money because it saves the expert time and reduces the number of hours the expert can bill for.
Another way the chronology helps is to compare submitted billing claims to the injuries that were part of an accident versus ones that were not. This helps the attorney save money by excluding billing that was not related to the injury that is subject of litigation and therefore submitted erroneously.
We help bridge the gap between the medical world and the legal world by providing assistance organizing medical records, putting key and critical facts into chronological order, and summarizing what was found in the record.
Yes, we also help with research for various reasons to include explanation of abbreviations, definition of medical terms, clarifying the difference between disorders that are similar yet have distinct differences, and assistance supporting causation and the standard of care.
Yes, we can assist with expert witness location. Our contacts in the medical field allow us to find qualified experts in a variety of medical specialties. Furthermore, we can speak with the experts about the case after doing the chronology and explain what happened. Experts can be screened to ensure they have the correct experience, knowledge, and training to qualify them to work on the case and comment on the standard of care. The attorneys budget and ceiling on what they want to spend can also be taken into account when negotiating a rate with the expert.
Yes, we can attend medical examinations with clients and report on what was done during the exam. The time spent waiting in the waiting room to be seen, sitting in the exam room waiting for the physician, time spent taking the history, and time spent examining the client are all important things for the attorney to know. I can’t tell you the number of times the physician spent less than 5 minutes examining the client. When questioned in a deposition or at trial, this becomes important because how can this physician possibly draw a conclusion when they spent less than 5 minutes examining them? Furthermore the report documents what the physician examined and what the results were. For example, if reflexes were tested, did the client have any? Were they hyperactive? Were they absent? Did the physician not bother to test the reflexes yet document in their report that they did? When jurisdiction allows for it and the attorney wants it, audio recording of the exam is also taken. This provides digital documentation of the exact time spent taking a history and time spent on the physical exam. It documents what questions were asked and serves as an irrefutable witness to exactly what went on during the exam.
