Attorneys handling personal injury, medical malpractice, catastrophic injury, and other medically complex cases often face a challenge that goes beyond understanding the law: understanding the medicine.
Medical records can span thousands of pages, involve multiple specialties, and contain complex terminology, treatment histories, diagnoses, and prognoses. A legal nurse consultant can help attorneys make sense of this medical information and apply clinical knowledge to the needs of a legal case.
By combining nursing experience with an understanding of litigation, a legal nurse consultant serves as a bridge between the medical and legal fields, helping attorneys better understand the clinical issues that may affect their cases.
What Is a Legal Nurse Consultant?
A legal nurse consultant is a registered nurse who uses their clinical knowledge and healthcare experience to assist attorneys, law firms, insurance professionals, and other legal professionals with medical-related issues.
Unlike a healthcare provider treating a patient, a legal nurse consultant works within a legal context. Their role may include reviewing medical records, developing medical chronologies, identifying potential issues within the medical evidence, researching clinical information, and helping attorneys identify the appropriate medical expertise needed for a case.
The goal is not to replace the attorney or the medical expert. Instead, a legal nurse consultant provides clinical insight that can help the legal team better understand the medical facts.
What Does a Legal Nurse Consultant Do?
The specific responsibilities of a legal nurse consultant can vary depending on the needs of a case. Common areas of support include:
Medical Record Review
A legal nurse consultant can review medical records to identify significant diagnoses, procedures, treatments, complications, and other clinical information relevant to a case.
For attorneys, this can make large and complicated medical records easier to navigate and help identify information that may warrant additional investigation.
Medical Chronologies
Legal nurse consultants can organize medical information into a chronological timeline, helping attorneys understand the progression of an injury or condition from the initial incident through treatment and recovery.
A well-organized medical chronology can also help identify gaps in treatment, changes in condition, and relationships between different providers and treatments.
Medical Research and Case Analysis
Some cases require research into medical conditions, treatment standards, procedures, medications, or potential long-term effects of an injury.
A legal nurse consultant can help attorneys understand the clinical literature and identify medical issues that may require additional expert review.
Identifying the Appropriate Medical Expertise
One of the most important roles a legal nurse consultant can play is helping determine what type of medical expertise a case actually requires.
An attorney may know that a case involves a neurological injury, for example, but the appropriate expert may depend on the specific facts. The case could require a neurologist, neurosurgeon, physical medicine and rehabilitation physician, neuropsychologist, life care planner, or another specialized professional.
Clinical insight can help attorneys determine which specialties and qualifications are most relevant before beginning the expert search.
Legal Nurse Consultant vs. Medical Expert
A legal nurse consultant and a medical expert can serve different roles within a legal case.
A legal nurse consultant provides clinical knowledge and litigation support to help attorneys understand medical evidence and issues within a case.
A medical expert is a qualified healthcare professional whose specialized knowledge may be used to provide opinions regarding specific medical issues, including opinions that may ultimately be presented through expert testimony when appropriate.
In some cases, attorneys may benefit from both. A legal nurse consultant can help the legal team understand the medical evidence and identify the type of medical expertise needed, while an appropriate medical expert can address specialized opinions within their area of practice.
Why Human Clinical Judgment Matters
Finding a medical professional with the right specialty is not necessarily the same as finding the right expert for a particular case.
Credentials, specialty, clinical experience, publications, geographic location, and other factors may all be relevant. But the medical issues presented by each case are different.
This is why expert matching should involve more than a database search.
A legal nurse consultant with substantial medical-legal experience can review the circumstances of a case, understand the clinical issues involved, and help determine what type of expertise is appropriate.
The LegalMed180 Approach to Legal Nurse Consulting and Expert Matching
At LegalMed180, we take a hands-on approach to connecting attorneys with the clinical expertise their cases require.
Our white-glove concierge expert matching service is personally overseen by Leigh Anne Levy, Founder and CEO of LegalMed180. With more than 20 years of experience in legal nursing and extensive experience supporting attorneys with complex medical-legal matters, Leigh Anne brings clinical judgment and human oversight to the matching process.
Rather than simply providing attorneys with a database of healthcare professionals, LegalMed180 evaluates the needs of the case to help identify the appropriate type of expertise.
That can include determining:
- Which medical specialty is most relevant to the case
- Whether a subspecialist may be appropriate
- What clinical experience the expert should have
- Whether multiple disciplines may be needed
- Which qualifications and experience are relevant to the specific medical issues
- Whether the potential expert’s background aligns with the needs of the case
This human review provides an additional layer of credibility and quality control to the expert matching process.
When Should an Attorney Consider a Legal Nurse Consultant?
A legal nurse consultant may be particularly valuable when a case involves:
- Extensive or complicated medical records
- Catastrophic injuries
- Spinal cord or traumatic brain injuries
- Medical malpractice allegations
- Multiple medical specialties
- Significant future medical care
- Life care planning
- Complex causation questions
- Medical expert identification and matching
The earlier clinical expertise is incorporated into a medically complex case, the more opportunity the legal team has to identify important medical issues and determine what additional expertise may be needed.
Connect With the Right Clinical Expertise Through LegalMed180
Understanding the medicine behind a case can require specialized clinical knowledge. A legal nurse consultant can help attorneys interpret medical information, organize evidence, identify important clinical issues, and determine what type of medical expertise may be needed.
LegalMed180 takes that support a step further through personalized, white-glove expert matching overseen by Leigh Anne Levy and backed by more than two decades of legal nursing experience.
Instead of spending hours searching databases and trying to determine which medical professional is right for a particular case, attorneys can submit a request and receive personalized guidance based on the clinical needs of the case.
Become a LegalMed180 member to access personalized concierge expert matching and connect with vetted medical professionals who can provide the clinical expertise your case requires.
When the medical issues are complex, the right expertise matters. LegalMed180 helps attorneys find it.
