The expert you see will produce a report for your lawyer which they will then use to:
- Value your claim for compensation.
- Justify any losses like lost earnings, medical expenses, or travel expenses.
- Find out if you need further investigation or treatment to assist your recovery.
This report, known as a medico-legal report, will give a solicitor the valuable information they need to determine the extent of your suffering and loss to allow them to use a combination of their own expertise and experience, together with official guidelines, to value your claim. In the absence of such a report, your solicitor can only ever give you estimates.
If you had two weeks off work and lost out on earnings, the other side may be liable to pay those for you. But they won’t just take your word for it – they want solid proof that the time you had off was required; i.e. you genuinely could not have worked whilst you were off. The medical expert can comment on this and confirm in the report that this time off was justified.
If you need treatment like physiotherapy, or perhaps a scan for further investigation, the expert can recommend this and we as lawyers can organise this on a private basis and charge it to the other side. This medical evidence, as you can probably gather, is therefore very important!
I’ve seen my GP / been to hospital – isn’t that enough?
Not to value your claim – the expert we send you to see is qualified to produce a medico-legal report, outlining information like I have mentioned above, to allow a solicitor to properly value and justify a claim. A report from your doctor or a hospital isn’t the same, and we wouldn’t recommend relying upon this as evidence for a claim.
It is important to see your GP or have some form of medical attention after an accident though.