Day in the life of an Expert Witness

The Family Justice Council (FJC) has published guidance for professionals and litigants who represent themselves on the use of covert recordings in family law proceedings. The guidance follows an increased use of covert recordings in family law proceedings and the need for clear guidance, and the protection and privacy of those subject to the recording.

The Civil Procedure Rule Committee has approved in principle a 2-year pilot on “access to public domain documents” in the Commercial Court, London Circuit Court and the Financial List effective from 1 October 2025. 

The EWI has been provided with a copy of a recently written paper setting out the risk of re-traumatising claimants in medico-legal litigation and proposing reforms to reduce this risk. We support the principles set out in the paper and the aims and objectives of the authors, and consider the paper is a good starting point for a broader discussion among the medio-legal community of the risk of worsening the psychological trauma and the need to work within a trauma informed approach. We have set out in this article some issues we think could benefit from the input of the wider community, but welcome views on other issues.

The Legal Aid Agency ('LAA') have updated their Guidance on the Remuneration of Expert Witnesses.

The aim of the new procedure is to ensure cases are properly pleaded before a trial date is assigned and to facilitate the earlier resolution of clinical negligence actions. This should in turn decrease legal costs.

We have just refreshed our guidance on ‘Expert Discussions and Joint Statements' in the EWI Knowledge Hub (https://www.ewi.org.uk/Knowledge-Hub). Prepared with the input of members and the EWI Editorial Committee, the guidance includes lots of invaluable advice for navigating each of the key stages in expert discussions and joint statements, form and content, joint statement templates, and how to avoid the common pitfalls. 

The Civil Procedure Rule Committee (‘Committee) decided, provisionally, to postpone the extended Fixed Recoverable Cost (‘FRC’) stocktake, which was initially planned for February 2025, until October 2025, while the the cost which may be recovered to obtain medical reports in low value road traffic accident related soft tissue and whiplash injury claims is being uprated by 25.4%.

In recent years a range of stakeholders have raised concerns regarding unregulated experts providing evidence in family law court cases and the standard of the evidence they provide. The Family Procedure Rule Committee is consulting on new FPR 25.5A with the aim of requiring any expert instructed in family law children proceedings to be regulated. A key purpose of the changes is to ensure that any expert instructed in family law children proceedings has the appropriate skills and qualifications on which to base their expert evidence.