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Taking flight

21 February 2019 / Mark Solon
Issue: 7829 / Categories: Features , Profession , Expert Witness
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Why are expert witnesses stopping work? Mark Solon reports

One third of expert witnesses have considered stopping their work as an expert witness and two thirds of experts would stop doing legal aid work if expert witness fees were further reduced. These are two of the findings from the expert witnesses surveyed in The Times & Bond Solon 2018 Expert Witness survey.

They wrote: ‘More complex work, fewer hours, less pay, shorter deadlines, more pressure, more administration....Very demanding and not worth the stress of my life....Not getting paid and the increasing tension of reducing fees.... Solicitors sometimes do not accept/understand how much time a complex case can take.’

We must remember that expert witnesses have a day job and expert witness work is a secondary source of income. If the expert’s fees are too low, experts have to decide whether the case is worth their time and worth coping with the stress of respecting the tight deadlines set by the court. Also, since the judgment in Jones v Kaney [2011]

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NEWS
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Charlie Mercer and Astrid Gillam of Stewarts crunch the numbers on civil fraud claims in the English courts, in this week's NLJ. New data shows civil fraud claims rising steadily since 2014, with the King’s Bench Division overtaking the Commercial Court as the forum of choice for lower-value disputes
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