PLC maintains a database of nationally renown experts in forensic psychology and psychiatry, across a wide range of subspecialties. Our experts have proven track records with extensive CVs documenting their reliance upon the methods of science to support their methods and findings.
PLC carefully screens each and every expert to ensure their qualifications and adherence to the appropriate standards of professional practice.
PLC assists attorneys to identify the best qualified and credentialed experts in the forensic area needed for the case.
Critical to obtaining an expert report which will support your theory of the case, is identification of the proper forensic questions to ask.
Psychologists and psychiatrists rarely understand the nuances of legal requirements, rules of evidence, definitions of legal terms or concepts. Lawyers are even less likely to be familiar with psychological constructs, theories, and methods.
Rarely is there a one-to-one correspondence between the questions a lawyer needs answered, and the questions psychologists and psychiatrists typically study.
PLC can help lawyers bridge the gap between science and law and identify appropriate forensic questions phrased in a manner that allows the forensic expert to offer an informed opinion that serves the needs of legal system.
You’ve received your expert’s report and conclusions. Now what? How do you evaluate whether or not the expert has answered the forensic questions in a way that will help the fact-finder understand the forensic issues at hand?
How do you prepare for direct examination of your expert so as to ensure that complex forensic issues and concepts are communicated in a manner intelligible to lay juries and judges lacking a background in science or psychology?
PLC professionals will help you simplify the critical concepts and points of your expert’s report and findings, and develop, where needed, visual and other aids to further fact-finders’ understanding of the evidence.
Evaluating Opposing Experts’
Qualifications and Practices
Not infrequently, even the most qualified experts may be reluctant to criticize a colleague’s method, report, or findings. Even if your expert is willing to critique the adversary’s expert, you’re likely to pay high expert fees for such work.
PLC’s expert network of professionals can perform the kind of intensive, and uncompromising critique of the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing side’s experts at a fraction of the cost.
PLC expert network of professionals will also obtain and review each of the references cited in the opposing expert’s report to identify discrepancies between the cited reference and the expert’s report of cited findings or methods.
PLC’s expert network of professionals will work with your expert to incorporate into his or her report a critical analysis of the opposing expert’s errors, unreliable methodologies, or unvalidated findings.
A comprehensive review and analysis of the opposing experts’ reports and conclusions is essential to proper preparation for cross-examination. To help attorneys meet this challenge, PLC professionals will review and analyze opposing expert’s reports for:
Compliance with accepted standards of professional practice
Proper administration, and accurate scoring and tabulation of assessment instruments
Adherence to generally accepted and empirically validated methodologies
Interpretations grounded in validated scientific research
Adequate protection against contaminating factors affecting reliability
Excessive and unwarranted reliance upon clinical experience and judgment in formation of proffered opinion
Adherence to Popperian principles of falsifiability
Satisfaction of Fryeand/or DaubertStandards for admissibility of expert testimony
Proper accommodation of statistical factors such as base rates and likelihood ratios
PLC Professionals help attorneys successfully challenge unsubstantiated claims of opposing experts and debunk unreliable methodologies.
Often experts hide behind vaguely defined psychological terms and concepts, making effective cross-examination difficult. PLC has developed cross-examination stratagems and detailed sequences of forced-choice questions that strip away the veneer of professionalism and reveal the expert’s conclusions for what they are; mere net opinions devoid of an empirical foundation.
PLC maintains a database of over five hundred questions, covering a broad spectrum of forensic disciplines, expert qualifications, and methodologies, specifically designed to uncover the unreliability and lack of scientific validity for many commonly proffered expert formulations.
Let PLC demonstrate how to discredit junk science and render opposing expert opinion impotent before a fact-finder.
Challenging Reliance on Clinical Judgment/Experience
Of all forensic sciences, forensic psychologists and psychiatrists are the most likely to fall back on clinical judgment and clinical experience as the foundation for a proffered opinion.
Yet, half-a-century of research has conclusively established the unreliability of clinical judgment that is untethered to scientifically grounded research.
PLC has developed proven methods for challenging such testimony. First, PLC trains attorneys to employ a cross-examination strategy designed to elicit, from the opposing expert, an admission that use of clinical judgment in assessment, diagnosis, or prognosis, represents a methodology susceptible to empirical evaluation.
Second, using PLC supplied questions and research, attorneys elicit testimony showing that the expert has failed to systematically demonstrate the reliability of his/her methods or the validity of his/her conclusions.
PLC believes that unsubstantiated, unreliable clinical judgment represents the greatest threat to the acceptance of scientifically grounded psychological and psychiatric evidence in the courts today, and is committed to its exclusion.
PLC maintains a database of thousands of research articles, treatises, books, manuscripts, reports, and presentations, featuring the latest research findings and scientific advances relevant to forensic practice today. In addition, PLC accesses tens of thousands of research articles and books through on-line databases and research libraries.
PLC professional staff includes talented researchers capable of sifting through hundreds of research papers to identify the critical and relevant articles necessary to advance or defend against a claim. PLC staff will work with retained experts to ensure that only the most recent, current, and valid scientific research and evidence is presented in court.
There may be no scenario more devastating to a client’s case than the client’s expert witness being caught unawares of a recently published study disconfirming or challenging the expert’s methods or conclusions.
PLC arms attorneys and their experts with the latest findings in the relevant disciplines, and prepares them to respond fully to contradictory findings and research with which the opposing party may seek to challenge or discredit their testimony.
PLC will review any contradictory research and assist counsel and retained expert by identifying weaknesses or infirmities in the study’s design or reported findings, or by helping to distinguish the research based on the facts of the case before the court.
Responding to the Unexpected
During Hearings or Trials
As part of its Litigation Support Services, PLC professionals will sit second chair during critical stages of court hearings or trials, prepared to offer real-time assistance when the unexpected happens.
PLC professionals come to court armed with a laptop loaded with searchable copies of all experts reports, reference lists, and CVs, as well as copies of material cited in any report. Where medical, psychiatric, psychological, educational, or other records are in evidence, PLC will scan those documents in a searchable format.
Thus prepared, PLC will locate, retrieve, and provide critical pieces of evidence as they are needed during direct and cross-examination of witnesses.
