Experts forced to juggle poor instructions, unrealistic deadlines & late payment
Poor communications, pressure to take sides and late payment are the lot of many expert witnesses working today.
Nearly half of the 191 experts taking part in this year’s Bond Solon Annual Expert Witness Survey said they would refuse to work again with a particular solicitor or firm. Among a wide range of reasons were “pressure to be partisan”, “wish to unreasonably influence report”, “poor instructions” and solicitors refusing to pay because the report did not support their client’s case. One expert reported: “They want a ‘hired gun’ and expect the expert to ‘do as they are told’.”
The most common problem experienced by the experts, surveyed earlier this month at the Bond Solon conference, was late payment. Some experts used debt collection agencies to secure their fee.
They also complained about solicitors not keeping them up to date with progress on the case, failing to provide all the necessary documents, providing poor instructions and setting unrealistic deadlines. Some 39 of the 141 experts surveyed have been pressurised to change their report. The experts also encountered bad manners, last-minute changes and poor presentation.
Mark Solon, solicitor and director of Bond Solon, says: “The survey revealed yet again some of the main complaints that experts have about instructing solicitors.
“These issues shockingly have led some experts to refuse to work with certain firms. Even though Lord Woolf wrote about the end of the culture of using expert hired guns as ‘adversarial tools’ way back in 1999 when the new form of civil procedure rules first came into force, some solicitors have not got the message.”
The experts gave the thumbs-down to the new system of randomised selection of experts, which was introduced for whiplash cases in April. More than half the experts rejected the idea that randomised selection is a fairer way for experts to be hired, pointing out that it may not make the best use of expertise or allow for client choice.
However, nearly half the experts have more work than last year—despite the intentions of the courts to limit expert evidence to speed up proceedings and bring costs down.
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