Legal requirements of an expert witness report

In a legal process, there can be some situations where the expert evidence is necessary to strengthen the case. It is a huge asset for most criminal cases and the expert witness can provide incredible value for some issues raised before the court. Thus, an expert’s report is one of the most important documents which could provide immense assistance to the retaining counsel.

Who is an expert witness?

An expert witness is an expert who by virtue of education, skill, training or experience is believed to have specialized knowledge in particular subject than the average person.


What does he do?

Basically, expert witness helps to the party and their legal representation pursue the confusing details of medical situations. Thus, an expert witness can provide their opinions and assistance in the specific areas of specialization to both sides of a legal case-plaintiff and defense.

Overview of expert report:

Thus, to perform this great job, the expert witness usually has to provide a written report which includes all his opinions about the matter he examined. Basically, the major purpose of the expert report is the expression of the expert’s opinion and this opinion should be expressed in a clear, confident and supportable manner. Hence, Rule 26, Federal Rules of Civil procedure, requires an expert witness to provide a written report which includes the complete statement of all opinions and the basis and the reason for them, the data or other information considered in forming them. Report must include exhibits, such as photographs or diagrams, which will be used to summarize or support them. Therefore, when an expert has read or reviewed privileged materials in connection with forming his opinion, the expert witness is deemed to have ‘considered’ the materials to satisfied the rule 26(a)(2)(B).


Further it was held in the case Trigon v United States 204F.R.D at 283 that it was necessary to include all the documents which were provided to or reviewed by the expert witness whether or not he relies on such documents or information in preparing his report. According to the Federal rules of civil procedure, a listing of all publications authored by the expert witness in the previous 10 years and the details of the basic qualification, education, training, as well as the experience of the expert witness must be contained in the report.

However, a major revision to the federal rules governing expert’s witness report is on track to take effect in December 2010.Therefore the rules 26 of the federal rules of civil procedure would no longer allow full discovery of draft expert reports.

Hence, these amendments would prohibit discovery of draft expert reports and limit attorney- expert communications.