What is legal nurse consulting?
A nurse's eyes on the medical side of a case.
"The primary role of the legal nurse consultant is to evaluate, analyze, and render informed opinions on the delivery of healthcare and the resulting outcomes."
American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants (AALNC)
A legal nurse consultant is a registered nurse who brings clinical judgment to medically related legal matters: medical malpractice, nursing negligence, personal injury, wrongful death, long-term care, workers' compensation, product liability and licensing matters. The LNC reads the chart the way clinicians wrote it, explains what it means, and shows the legal team where the important facts are.
Legal nurse consultants are registered nurses who bridge medicine and law. Attorneys, insurers and healthcare organizations use LNCs to make sense of thousands of pages of records, find the clinical facts that matter, and see the case the way a jury, a nurse expert and the opposing side will see it.
Typical LNC work, as described by AALNC, includes organizing and analyzing records and medical literature, identifying record tampering, omissions and contradictions, preparing chronologies, evaluating the elements of a claim (duty, breach, causation, damages), educating attorneys on clinical issues, identifying and conferring with expert witnesses, and testifying as a nurse expert or fact witness. LNCs also help prepare for depositions, and create trial materials such as timelines and demonstrative exhibits.
What is a legal nurse consultant?
A legal nurse consultant (LNC) is a registered nurse who uses clinical expertise to evaluate, analyze and give informed opinions on the delivery of healthcare and its outcomes for attorneys, insurers and other legal professionals.
What does a legal nurse consultant do?
Organizes and analyzes medical records and literature, identifies omissions, contradictions or tampering, prepares chronologies, evaluates duty, breach, causation and damages, educates the legal team on clinical issues, locates, vets and confers with expert witnesses, helps prepare for depositions, creates trial materials such as timelines and demonstrative exhibits, drafts medical portions of legal documents, and may testify as a nurse expert or fact witness.
How is an LNC different from a nurse expert witness?
An LNC usually works behind the scenes as a consultant to the legal team. A nurse expert witness is retained to give opinions on the standard of care and may write a report and testify. One nurse can do both, in separate roles.
Who hires legal nurse consultants?
Plaintiff and defense law firms, insurance companies, hospitals and healthcare systems, government agencies and corporations with medically related legal matters.
Attorneys: need help with a case?
See our legal nurse consulting and expert witness services.
Nurses: thinking about this work?
Guides and tools for legal nurse consulting and expert witness work.
Sources: AALNC Attorney Resources; AALNC FAQs.