Are you being recorded? Experts should take care to understand the available technology.

No doubt at least some members will have received some shiny new tech gadgets in their Christmas stockings, but as you  get to know the latest toys we start 2026 with a reminder to be aware of the possibility that meetings may be recorded without your knowledge. In a recent case involving  expert neuro-psychological tests […]

Roast expert anyone? Check out how you look to an outsider.

At the risk of upsetting vegetarians or anyone who’s had a little too much turkey we thought we’d suggest you make use of the Christmas to New Year lull to think about freshening up your online presence by roasting it! The advent of AI tools has generated a range of websites that will give you […]

Nowhere to Hide. Better public access to court documents, including expert reports, from January 2026

Expert witnesses play a key role in the justice system and it has always been the case that expert reports and other documents referred to in court were in the public domain. But getting hold of them has not been straightforward and concerns were raised in Lady Hale’s judgment in Cape Intermediate Holdings Ltd v […]

Good experts are all alike – clear, helpful and fair

As Tolstoy might have said if writing about litigation rather than Anna Karenina,  “All good experts are alike; each poor expert is unhelpful in their own way”. There have been some notable examples of poor experts over the past year, from those who simply don’t have the right expertise or understanding of their role to […]

Professional Body Takes Action. Why professional memberships and regulation matter for experts.

Many experts are members of the professional bodies or associations relevant to their specialist field and will benefit from news, information, networking events and so on, as well as the ability to put the relevant letters after their name. Of course these are all helpful aspects of professional membership but from the point of view […]

Searching for evidence. A reminder to experts of the need to look thoroughly.

Experts  often have to rely on their clients and instructing solicitors to provide them with the material they need to form opinion. That evidence may be documents, data from an IT system or audio or video recordings and if the evidence you are given is incomplete or distorted in some way your opinions may turn […]

3 Unwise Experts. Independence means hearing, seeing and speaking the ‘evil’ in your client’s case

The High Court ruling against Danish tax authority SKAT in a £1.4 billion dividend tax fraud case has been widely reported, not least because the judge concluded that SKAT’s controls on the transactions involved were so flimsy as to represent the equivalent of a ‘help yourself’ sign outside a bank.   Less attention has been […]

Criminal Procedure Rules changes for experts

The Criminal Procedure Rules Committee have issued a new consolidated set of the Criminal Procedure Rules which came into force on 6th October 2025. The Criminal Procedure Rules 2025 replaces the Criminal Procedure Rules 2020 and incorporates the 9 sets of amendments made since the 2020 rules were published. The Committee has also published a […]

Privacy for experts. Updated GDPR Guidance from The Academy of Experts

The Academy’s GDPR guidance turned 5 this year so we thought it was a good time to review it in the light of a better understanding of how GDPR has been implemented in practice. One of the challenges of developing guidance for our expert members is they cover a wide range of specialisms and as […]

Expert gold dust. Agreed expert evidence benefits the court and the parties.

Most discussion (and criticism) of experts revolves around issues where experts disagree, often in ways that are pivotal to a case.  But there are many cases that go unnoticed where experts agree on most, if not all, of the important issues, which for the most part is what you would expect from professional experts given […]