Role and Responsibilities of the Expert
As the role of the Expert becomes more sharply defined and is held under the spotlight with the development of new rules, the need to know the latest regulations grows ever stronger. Experts constantly need to be updated with news and CPD training programmes in order to be in full possession of the facts….We hopethat our interesting links will provide our members with useful tools to enable them to remain at the top of their chosen profession.
Expert Witnesses form a thorny subject in the UK. On the one hand, their use is growing as litigation and mediation grows more complex – and the stakes, as legal costs rise, become ever higher. On the other hand, there remains the sneaking suspicion, fuelled by the US experience, that they can be “hired guns”.
The Civil Justice Council has now therefore drawn up a new protocol for instructing experts when they give evidence in civil cases. This new protocol emphasises again the duties that experts have to the courts; warns about offering conditional or contingency fees; and details how experts should be handled, and how, for example, single joint experts – where one expert is instructed by different parties – should be used. It also spells out how experts themselves can ask the courts for guidance. Moreover, the new code also warns that judges do have the power to make cost orders – both against parties who instruct them and also directly against experts whose evidence causes significant additional costs to be incurred and who ‘flagrantly and recklessly’ disregard their duties to the court.
In broad terms, much of the new code is welcomed by lawyers, who say it is helpful to have the previously piecemeal guidance available in one place. Still some are concerned that as the roles and responsibilities of experts become more closely codified and regulated, a new industry could emerge. What we could find is that in 20 years’ time we have a cadre of full-time expert witnesses with professional accreditation, who no longer actually practise in their own profession.
