Michael Young asks, are we divided by a common language?
“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done remains undone” (Confucius).
Lawyers and expert witnesses inhabit entirely different intellectual worlds. Lawyers have been trained to extract information from documents, to ask closed questions, and above all, to win their argument no matter which side they are on. An excellent lawyer will be able to present a good argument from both sides. The expert is in some respects an interloper. The lawyer relies heavily on the expert helping them win their case. However, technical expertise does not automatically qualify someone to be an expert: very different skills and competencies are also required. One of those skills is the ability to “translate” the language of their profession into language that can be easily understood by the legal profession who are, after all, lay people in this context. It is often this failure to translate, and to present reports that lawyers can understand, that
