Compared to medicolegal services generally, medicolegal services in the UK are plagued by outdated practice.
Bizarrely, in the medicolegal system training also appears to be largely aimed at experienced Consultants and experts with an established medicolegal practice rather than the less experienced experts or medicolegal trainees. In other words, the system is training the trainers rather than the trainees.
In addition, It is clear that educational practice in the medicolegal system is still to this day based on classroom work, a most unsuitable way of teaching and learning for the clinical settings.
Services are otherwise known to be in short supply and unable to meet demand due to limited and ever diminishing number of experts, spiralling costs of litigation, delays in service delivery and poor quality of medical evidence of course notwithstanding, Psychiatry not excluded.
(Box 1) The right to legal aid is enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). Article 6(3) © guarantees:
- The right to legal aid where the defendant does not have the means to pay for it;
- The right to free legal aid where the interest of justice so requires.
The UK is a signatory to the ECHR However it is extraordinary that out of the 49 European states the UK is unique in steadily eroding access to legal aid. Legal Aid does not include access to legal Aid in civil proceedings or outside civil proceedings.
Attempts by the Authorities to reduce costs include Section 57 of the CPR rules (Fundamental Dishonesty) and more recently the introduction of the Intermediate track in 2023 (Pamplin 2023).
Attempts to reduce costs by legislation ignore the law of supply and demand and are unlikely to be successful. They also ignore fundamental issues about the training of Experts
GS Medical Group aims to challenge this by providing training to those that are starting up in the medicolegal system rather than experienced Consultants and Experts with an established practice as it is the case now. It also aims to make up to date medicolegal education available to Experts, including Supervision and Mentoring and opportunities for Experts to engage in Case based Discussions (CbD’s).
GS Medical Group believes the issues to be interrelated and the poor levels of service provision and lack of satisfactory training in the medicolegal system to stand in a relationship of Cause and Effect.
The Group is by so doing seeking above all to make excellent medicolegal services more directly available regardless of cost (Box 1) .
