Instructing
How to instruct an expert witness
Instruction through expertsearch runs directly between you and the practitioner. You identify the discipline, contact the practitioner named in the listing, and agree terms with them.
The route
Four steps, none of them through us
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01
Find the discipline
Listings are organised by discipline and sub-specialty, so Search by the field the evidence sits in, not by name. Browse all specialties, listed by group, or filter to the nation and city the claim is proceeding in.
Entries are grouped, not ranked. There is no paid placement and no ordering that can be bought, so the sequence a search returns carries no recommendation.
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02
Contact the practitioner
Each listing carries a direct contact route to the practitioner it names. Instruction proceeds between you and them from that point; the register takes no part in the correspondence and sees none of it.
Where the discipline is not yet settled, send a written enquiry describing the claim instead, and Use the field of evidence to identify the disciplines worth searching.
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03
Agree fees and terms
Fees are the practitioner’s own and are agreed with you at the point of instruction, along with scope and timescale. The register applies no mark-up, takes no commission on the work and charges nothing for putting you in contact.
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04
Commission the report
Listed practitioners prepare the report types the courts expect, from breach and causation through to condition and prognosis and quantum.
In England and Wales the court’s permission is required to rely on expert evidence, under CPR 35.4. Scotland and Northern Ireland are separate legal systems and operate their own procedures for expert evidence.
What the register is not
A directory, not an agency
expertsearch publishes the details of practitioners who accept medico-legal instructions. It does not broker the work, hold the file, or stand between you and the practitioner at any stage.
That distinction decides what the listings can tell you. An entry states the discipline, the sub-specialties and the areas covered, because those are matters of fact. It carries no assessment of the practitioner and no view on which of them a particular claim needs.