So, why should you hire a Legal Nurse Consultant rather than an MD?

Before we dive into why you should hire a legal nurse consultant, let’s review exactly what a LNC provides for the attorney.  A LNC provides an attorney with many things, but most importantly MD’s and LNC’s are hired to provide medical expertise on medically related legal cases.  It takes a trained healthcare professional to help an attorney win their case.

Any attorney who practices personal injury law, elder law, toxic torts, malpractice or worker’s compensation cases needs to hire a medical expert at some point to help them interpret their case via medical records review and more. 

Physicians are used as medical experts on cases often, so why should you hire a Legal Nurse Consultant when you have a doctor that could assist you?

 Here are just a few reasons…

 A Legal Nurse Consultant:

• Screens case for merit
• Identifies the Standard of Care
• Thoroughly Reviews the medical record
• Determines whether there was a breach in standard of care leading to causation and damage issues
• Find expert witnesses
• Conducts client interviews
• Conducts research and summarizes medical literature so it’s easily understandable
• Provides a timeline of medical events and correlates them to the allegations
• Educates attorneys regarding medical facts relevant to the case
• Walks with the attorney side by side through the entire lifetime of the case providing expert opinion where needed
• Is available 24/7

 Aside from the above it’s to the attorney’s advantage to hire a Legal Nurse Consultants over a physician for the following reasons:

• LNC’s are less expensive
• Legal Nurse consultants provide more
• An MD won’t always (if ever) provide a chronology or timeline of events with causation – it’s too time consuming
• Legal Nurse Consultants, as nurses, are well versed in a multitude of skills including standard of care as it pertains to all aspects of healthcare, ie. Nursing practices, bedside care, medications, ancillary departments, lab work and medical charting and recording
• A Legal Nurse Consultant can act as a liaison between the attorney and the physician
• And, lastly a Legal Nurse Consultant usually has many contacts that they rely on for insights and specialties, such as other nurses, physicians etc.

So, now the real question is, “why wouldn’t you hire a LNC over a MD?”  The answer is really simple.  A LNC should always be your first choice when preparing for a case.  If a time ever arises where you need multiple sources of input a Legal Nurse Consultant can help you connect with the right people for the case.