When Forensic Neuropsychiatric Expertise Is Indicated, Early Retention Is Best

Just as no self-respecting lawyer would send a demand letter, file a complaint, or serve a responsive pleading without first investigating all available factual evidence and researching the applicable law, no competent litigator should embark on the litigation process without retaining, and consulting with, the expert witnesses who will be necessary to make the client's affirmative case and to rebut the adversary's opposing case. Often, experts will identify lines of inquiry, approaches to marshalling evidence, and strategies for debunking the other side's fact and expert witnesses that may prove decisive at trial. If the decision to retain one's own experts is delayed until the eve of trial, such opportunities will be lost.

With no category of expert witnesses is this need to retain one's own expert early more true than with a forensic neuropsychiatrist. Of course, if the mental state of a party has been placed at issue in a lawsuit, most lawyers will turn, sooner or later, to a psychiatric witness. What many litigators do not appreciate, however, is that the thoughtful, well-supported, and persuasive testimony of a qualified and articulate forensic neuropsychiatrist not only will serve to objectively evaluate a plaintiff's claims of mental or psychological injuries, but also may serve to undermine the overall reliability of the plaintiff and the plaintiff's treating clinicians and experts as clinical, objective historians relative to the nature and extent of impairment or as purveyors of objectively arrived at insights relative to attribution of causation.