Dr Chris Pamplin explains how to save money without damaging the supply of expert witnesses
In recent years, pressure on public finances has driven down fees for those lawyers who still work in the publicly funded arena. Fee capping and fixed fee schemes have played their part. Clearly, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) believes that what was sauce for the lawyer goose will be sauce for the expert witness gander.
In its consultation paper, Legal Aid: Funding Reforms, the MoJ claims to recognise that quality expert evidence is essential for the effective running of the civil and criminal justice systems. Yet it proposes the unsophisticated application of arbitrary banding and capping of the fee rate of those expert witnesses paid out of the Legal Aid fund, with a maximum hourly fee of £100.
Based on a decade’s-worth of survey data (www.jspubs.com/downloads/PDFs/UKREW_MoJ_Nov09.pdf) gathered by the UK Register of Expert Witnesses, this action will represent an approximate halving of the average fee rates for medical expert witnesses.
Doubtless few lawyers will worry much about expert witnesses earning less money from future publicly
