Chris Pamplin highlights changes & contrasts in the expert witness market
Expert witnesses have been living through interesting times. They have seen the loss of immunity to damages claims, the inexorable accretion of court rules and guidance, the sometimes over-zealous attention of professional regulators and the squeeze on public finances resulting in some distinctly odd decisions by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and the Legal Services Commission (LSC) over what they will pay experts.
As the largest multidisciplinary expert witness community in the UK, the experienced individuals listed in the UK Register of Expert Witnesses represent an unrivalled source of information on matters of importance to experts and those who instruct them. Since 1995, the Register has regularly conducted surveys of its expert witnesses. “Cross-examining the experts” (NLJ, 26 October 2007, p 1480) looked at the expert witness marketplace in 2007 based on these surveys. Using the 2011 survey, what follows considers how the expert marketplace has changed since then.
The experts
Of the 452 experts who returned questionnaires by mid-September 2011,
