Expert Witness Training Program

Aim
The aim of this course is for health care practitioners to develop the skills required to provide evidence to the Court as an expert witness.

Learning Outcomes
- Describe the roles and responsibilities of the various members of the legal profession involved in the court process.
- Write an expert medicolegal report that satisfies the requirements of the Court.
- Differentiate between ‘hearsay’, fact and opinion as forms of evidence.
- Plan and prepare to provide oral evidence in the courtroom.
- Integrate the theory provided in the prereading and interactive lectures with the practical delivery of expert evidence via role play (Courtroom Moot).
- Show the ability to describe a technical medical issue to lay people, avoiding the use of medical jargon.

About the Course
Legal Medicine encompasses the interchange between medicine and law and nowhere is this more apparent than when clinicians are invited to provide expert witness testimony. This is provided as either the treating clinician or to provide an independent assessment of a circumstance within the domain of the clinician’s expertise.

Being an expert witness requires providing a report and/or attending a court or tribunal and is often stressful for the clinician concerned. The Australasian College of Legal Medicine (ACLM) runs an Expert Report Writing Course and Expert Witness Training Program to familiarise medical professionals as to what is required within such situations.

Lectures
The Expert Witness Training Program includes didactic lectures to offer advice as to what is expected of the expert by the instructing solicitor, the barrister and the adjudicator (such as the judge). It instructs the clinician how to behave within set situations. There is also provision of didactic / interactive advice from an experienced expert witness. 

Pre-submitted Reports
Each participant is expected to submit a de-identified Court-ready report at few weeks prior to the course. These reports are critically marked to provide advice as to how they can be improved and they serve as a basis to be led and cross-examined in a moot (a mock trial) involving real lawyers in a courtroom environment.

Moot Court
The Moot Court is based on the case reports/material submitted by each candidate which the ‘expert’ marks and provides to each of the barristers and the judge before the day. The barristers alternate between leading and cross examining.

Before each candidate enters the witness stand they are asked to give an overview of the material facts of the case in which they are appearing as a witness, in order for the audience to understand the nature of the case.

After each moot, the performance of the candidate is openly discussed with all participants invited to comment and a summary given before the start of the next case. The marked reports are returned to the candidates upon completion of the course.