QUESTION 1 OF 6
What is the most common misconception lawyers have when they first approach you?
That is hard to say as I have worked with hundreds of lawyers over close to five decades. Most lawyers of every stripe (civil, criminal, family) have usually had an undergraduate course in psychology and have been exposed to psychological concepts from many sources. The ones who have been my customers for many years know exactly what they are going to get. New ones have probably been schooled in what a forensic psychologist can provide to them. The first thing they need to know is that not all psychologists are the same and only a small subset have routine forensic practices. Forensic psychologists know where the boundaries are and what legal questions they are expected to address. For example, with personal injury cases - what are the injuries (psychological and physical), diagnosis, source of the disorder (how is it related to a specific event - such as a MVA), what are the expectations for the course of the disorder, what are treatments with best outcome, costs of these, how are the examinees' lives impacted (work, school, recreation etc)?
QUESTION 2 OF 6
What question do you wish lawyers would ask before commissioning an assessment?
Sometimes there are unrealistically short timelines (someone waited too long and now at the 11th hour an assessment is needed). Also if 5000 pages of documents are provided this will need time to digest and will increase cost. Well planned referrals and realistic time expectations equal a good professional relationship.
QUESTION 3 OF 6
What is the most easily overlooked warning sign in a psychological report?
I do a lot of rebuttal reports and poor reports occasionally cross my desk - they are typically very long with many repetitions of information. Definitive statements in a report are also a flag - psychologists are clinical scientists and we are trained in probability and that is the bedrock of opinions. “In my professional opinion” is a statement often repeated in poor reports and this is meaningless - instead a report should lay out the empirical data upon which conclusions are based (as the teachers told us “show your work”). Many reports now cite scientific publications that can be referenced and checked against the direction of the conclusions of an assessment. Novice reports are easy to spot and often stray outside the experts defined legal scope.
“The best experts are good teachers and we are not there to ‘crack the case’ as some psychologists imagine.”
QUESTION 4 OF 6
Where does helpful client preparing cross into influencing an assessment?
Most good lawyers simply tell their clients to be honest and straight forward and do their best in the evaluation. They know that in the majority of psychological assessments there are checks for performance validity (such as on cognitive tasks) and symptom validity (mental health and personality measures) on psychological testing and it is almost impossible for an examinee to be coached around these. Sometimes after a report is rendered a lawyer may want to “massage” some of the information - while clarifying information is fine, leaving out vital information is not. Again this is quite rare with experienced professionals. Lawyers will state explicitly if the assessment result does not help their client a telephone consultation is warranted and a report may not be necessary. Many medical assessments these days are filtered through assessment brokers - the lawyer contacts these third party organizations and they commission experts to conduct evaluations. Some consider this to increase the objectivity of reports.
QUESTION 5 OF 6
What mistake do lawyers make when interpreting your findings?
Lawyers are not trained in psychological testing which involves understanding the nature of statistical data provided by tests. Because most standardized tests are based on group research they do not always reflect perfectly what the individual experiences - we call this the G2i effect (Group to individual) - the test data offers a basis for hypotheses about an examinee - they are not litmus tests offering exact information for every person tested. They also don’t comprehend the nuances of diagnoses - in DSM-5TR there are hundreds of different types of mental disorders and a “depression” is a generic but there are many types of depression each with different expectations and approaches to change. Forensic psychologists in report usually try to provide a layman’s explanation for their diagnoses and other findings without too much jargon.
QUESTION 6 OF 6
What has your experience taught you about working with lawyers that you wouldn’t find in a textbook?
I am sometimes contacted by other psychologists when they get a subpoena for court appearances as they think that every lawyer is a brilliant Perry Mason who is going to get them on the witness stand and ask them questions which will humiliate them. Most lawyers first don’t have this ability and they certainly don’t know as much about psychology and the methods we use as psychologists, so this nightmare fantasy is unrealistic. Experts do have substantial contributions to make to help in legal decisions but ultimately, we are just educators not legal decision makers. The best experts are good teachers and we are not there to “crack the case” as some psychologists imagine.
About the expert
Dr. J. Thomas Dalby is a Calgary-based psychologist whose private practice encompasses forensic psychology, neuropsychology and trial consulting. In practice since 1978, he earned his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Calgary in 1979. His work includes psychological assessments, expert testimony and teaching.