The panel trap. The four things that should drive every expert booking.

"Hired gun." I've heard the phrase from three directions over the years. Plaintiff clients about a defendant-favoured doctor. Defendant clients about a plaintiff-favoured one. And the more interesting one: experts themselves, saying they never want to become one.

That third voice is the one most people don't hear. The best examiners use the phrase to describe what they refuse to be. They protect their independence because they understand exactly how it gets lost.

What drives the right expert booking

Four things. The expert writes on the evidence. They have a reputation that holds up. Their reports settle matters before they reach court. And when matters do go to court, they hold under cross. Those four are the standard. Every other reason is a soft version of the trap.

Settlement does most of the work

Most personal injury matters settle before court. The figure across jurisdictions sits above 90%; some scheme data puts it closer to 95%. That changes what makes an expert worth choosing.

If 9 in 10 matters resolve without a hearing, the most valuable thing a report can do is drive a settlement on the right terms. A clear, well-reasoned report from a defensible expert does its work before a hearing date is even discussed. The other side reads it, runs the maths, and decides the fight isn't worth having.

Where the standard slips

Nobody chooses a weaker expert deliberately. Drift happens slowly. An expert gets booked again because the brief takes less time with them. Then again because their diary is open. Then again because their view is comfortable. None of those reasons are on the four-point list.

And here's where the hired gun problem starts. From the file, drift looks identical to deliberate choice. So does a pattern that's purely about quality. The industry doesn't separate the three, and defendant lawyers don't have to either. They challenge the pattern, not the person.

Where the exposure actually sits

When a pattern gets challenged, the consequences don't land on the lawyer who chose the expert, or the expert who wrote the report. They land on the case itself. Good lawyer, good expert, good report, and a file that becomes exposed anyway because no one was watching the shape of the panel over time.

What the best experts already do about it

Strong examiners protect themselves. I've had experts ask me directly to help balance their workload across both sides of medicolegal work, not because they were worried about the work itself, but because they understood that an expert seen as one side's go-to loses the independence that makes them useful to anyone. Their reputation is the asset. They get ahead of it.

Why platforms exist

The old model stopped scaling. Traditional providers were built around small panels, a high-touch operations team, and a brokered model sitting between referrer and doctor. It worked when volume was lower and panels were tighter. The economics still work for the providers, margins remain very high in a service referrers experience as slow, opaque, and capacity-constrained.

The bigger issue is what it does to choice. When a provider curates a small panel and controls what referrers see, everyone gets pushed toward the same few names. Platforms work differently: wider panels, visibility on who's available, transparent capacity, intelligent matching instead of a phone call. Wider panels make the four-point standard easier to hold, and make it easier for experts to balance their workload across both sides, the way the best ones already want to.

Where this is in three years

My read: the small-panel model that defines traditional medicolegal services will be a minority of the market. Volume work moves to platforms that offer wider panels, intelligent matching, and transparency on capacity and pricing. Traditional providers won't disappear, there's still a role for high-touch boutique services on complex matters. But the volume is moving, and the firms with practices to scale will move with it, because the alternative is more matters through the same narrow panel and more pattern risk.

Four things should drive every booking. Evidence. Reputation. Reports that settle. Experts that hold under cross. When those four hold, the hired gun phrase doesn't get used. When the structure drifts, eventually it does.