Chris Pamplin analyses the results of a major survey
of the expert witness marketplace
As the largest multi-disciplinary 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 and what follows is based on the latest of these surveys, carried out in the summer of 2007.
The experts
Of the 414 experts who returned questionnaires by mid-August, 181 were medical practitioners. Of the remaining 233 experts, 52 were engineers, 21 were in professions ancillary to medicine, 21 were accountants or bankers, 19 had scientific, veterinary or agricultural qualifications, 18 were surveyors or valuers and 17 were architects or building experts. The substantial “others” category totalled 85, of whom 12 were psychologists.
Work status and workload
Of the respondents, 211 (51% of the total) work full time and 165 (40%) work part time. Only 7% describe themselves as retired. These figures reveal a shift of some 5% towards part-time
