EMG Solicitors: The Future Direction of Expert Witness Services

Posted: 30th April 2025
by Emma Gaudern

Emma Gaudern, CEO of EMG Solicitors, shares her thoughts on the growing demand for their Expert Witness Services and why single joint expert instruction could deliver more favourable outcomes for clients.

Over the past 11 years, we are proud to have built one of the fastest growing law firms in the country centered around our five key values of cooperation, courage, excellence, integrity, and kindness.

Running as a thread throughout our business, our values not only reflect the way we support our clients, but our people too. As specialists in Court of Protection, underpinning our vision to keep contributing to the development of the sector and providing the best possible service to the clients we represent, and the professionals we work alongside, is paramount.

One area in which we are seeing growing demand and change is our Expert Witness Services.

Choice of expert

With some of the most experienced Court of Protection lawyers in the UK, our teams are regularly called upon by personal injury and medical negligence lawyers, acting on behalf of both claimants and defendants, to provide expert witness statements and evidence at trial in this complex and challenging area of work.

It’s an area that continues to evolve, and I believe in the future we will see a move to more single joint expert instruction in the Courts. It’s a change I personally support because I think it often delivers better outcomes. Ultimately, when you’re acting as an expert witness for only one client, or single joint expert, your duty as an expert is to the Court itself. With single joint expert instructions you are looking at things from a truly neutral angle. As Courts constantly push towards reducing litigation cost and timescales, and generally try to narrow areas of conflict, the attraction towards using single joint experts grows. Whilst we do often disagree with our counterparts in relation to what a deputyship might cost to manage, over time that disparity has reduced, and many differences are able to be resolved in a joint call.  With that in mind, the deputyship is an area that appears ripe and ready for more single joint expert instructions.

At EMG Solicitors, we currently undertake a real mix of claimant and defendant work. We are seeing significant growth in our claimant instructions, due to firms who might have previously used their internal deputyship team as expert, now choosing to refer the matter externally, to ensure their impartiality is not called into question.

Expertise you can count on

We’re quite unique in that we have 9 highly qualified members of the team, including 7 directors and 2 associates who act as experts. Working across property and affairs and health and welfare, each colleague has individual specialisms, which means we’re able to service a wide range of injuries and capacities. That strength and depth of knowledge gives us the opportunity to assign every case to an experienced expert, strengthening our ability to deliver the very best possible results for our clients.

As a firm, our wealth of experience representing both defendants and claimants individually is key and the hundreds of cases we have worked on gives us access to a rich bank of data we can refer to. Being able to cross-reference claims with similar cases allows us to provide robust, evidence-based advice and costs to the Courts based on real life examples.

We’ve worked incredibly hard to build a knowledge base that helps us effectively analyse our case history and inform the recommendations we make. This means we can be sure that our evidence will be robust and well-reasoned, should the matter proceed to trial. Coupled with the talent and experience of our team, I truly believe we’ve developed a first-class service and I’m incredibly proud of that.

Our ongoing commitment to quality and service excellence will always come first at EMG Solicitors. This is not only reflected by the dedication of our talented teams, but also through the awards and accreditations we have achieved. This has included being ranked in Chambers and Partners UK Legal Guide for Court of Protection (COP) in Property and Affairs, and described as ‘one of the finest Court of Protection firms in the country’ by Legal 500.

At EMG Solicitors, our door is always open for anyone that would like a conversation around our Court of Protection and Expert Witness Services, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Find out more about EMG Solicitors at www.emgsolicitors.com or call 0191 500 6989.