Contrary to popular belief, lawyers, judges and law enforcement officials are not all seeing and all knowing. They regularly need to call upon expert witnesses during trials. There are many kinds of expert witness available to legal professionals. Here is a very quick roundup of some of the most commonly called upon expert witnesses in the courts today.
Medical
Medical experts are needed in many court cases. The most broadly applicable kind of medical expert in court is a GP expert witness, who can provide clinical insight regarding most illnesses and injuries; click here to find out more. More specialist medical experts are often called in when a more complex issue is raised or pursued during a legal case. Medical experts are often key in criminal cases and work in conjunction with forensics experts and legal teams.
Forensics
Forensics experts are perhaps the most well-known of the expert witness cadres, largely thanks to their importance in many high profile criminal cases. Forensics, generally speaking, is the use of scientific methods to aid in the solving of a crime. There are many subsets of forensic expert – each specializing in a different scientific field. Handwriting experts, for instance, use forensic techniques to analyze any handwriting that may be important in a legal case.
Psychology
Psychological evidence is very important: especially in criminal cases involving vulnerable or potentially medically unfit defendants or prosecuting parties. Psychological evidence is often completely intangible and needs to be collected carefully and in an unbiased manner by a medical professional. These medical professionals can be criminal psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists or general practitioners and need to have related experience either with the case or with similar cases.
Forensic psychologists bring their clinical expertise to the legal arena. They may conduct and report upon the results of clinical assessments of parties involved in a court case. They may also conduct more general clinical assessments of schools, workplaces and other arenas related to a case.
Psychology has received a great deal of mass media attention when it comes to crime and punishment. The actual clinical role of a legal mental health professional is less to do with solving mysteries and more to do with shrewd assessment.
Financial
Experts in financial law and crime are regularly asked to testify in court in order to help prosecute or defend a person or organization. Money is a factor in a vast quantity of legal cases, which makes financial crime experts rather hot property. Financial forensics is a broad field in and of itself.
Cyber Security And Digital Forensics
It should come as no surprise to anybody that computers and online networks are regularly considered to be essential types of evidence in court cases. Unfortunately, not everybody has the necessary knowledge to understand or explain the nuanced and often highly technical details that make digital assets such important evidence. Cyber security and digital forensics experts are often called by prosecutions and defense teams during court cases in order to make sense of digital evidence or computing evidence.
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