Mark Solon anticipates the shake-up for expert witnesses in family courts
The single family court to be introduced next April hopes for fewer but better expert witnesses. “Fewer” can be achieved easily, given that restrictions on fees and time-scales are leading to grumblings within the ranks, but what about “better”?
When I asked Lord Justice Ryder, at a Westminster Legal Policy Forum seminar on family justice reform in July, about the likely impact of the new environment on expert witnesses, he commented that numbers would be reduced by “the gateway of the new test”, which is to ensure that an expert is used only where necessary.
He pointed out that there had never been a problem with “experts who subscribed to quality standards, usually through their own professional bodies, but also through referral agencies and those who have trained them” but that “it was the experts who quite often were time expired, who had not kept themselves up to date, who weren’t subject to CPD in their own organisations, who delivered materials that were not necessarily what the court expected”.
He added that
