TESTIMONIALS ON THE VALUE OF LEGAL NURSE CONSULTANTS

A Legal Nurse Consultant assisted our firm with a case evaluation that facilitated our ability to tailor our discovery requests for key information. Your member proved to be a competent, responsive and professional consultant. We will definitely utilize her expertise again!

Patty Hagner, Legal Assistant
Grady Holley, Attorney
Holley, Rosen & Beard, Attorneys at Law
Springfield, IL

I have used a Legal Nurse Consultant on several occasions and she has been invaluable in coordinating Social Security sections with particular medical records. Your member is thorough and prompt and I recommend her services.

Bradford C. Bucklin, Attorney
Bucklin Law Office
Springfield, IL

Our firm hired its first registered nurse in a staff support role in 1988. At that time, one Legal Nurse Consultant was hired for the firm’s main office. Later, Legal Nurse Consultants were hired for other offices as the benefits of employing a Legal Nurse Consultant became known. They are primarily assigned to medical malpractice, nursing home, personal injury, and other matters with complex medical issues and are available to assist attorneys from any practice areas as the need arises.

In addition to summarizing medical records and conducting medical research, it is especially helpful to have a nurse on staff to work with experts in the industry throughout the case. We’ve found that physician experts are more receptive to an initial call from a nurse when agreeing to accept a new case. Our nurses often perform tasks that might otherwise be billed by an attorney, such as obtaining the expert’s verbal opinion, which is more cost effective for our clients. Additionally, Legal Nurse Consultants attend interviews of hospital staff or other healthcare personnel, and work with the risk manager to assist with the overall case investigation.

In summary, I believe Legal Nurse Consultants are uniquely qualified to assist an attorney with the medical aspects of a case, and are necessary and important members of the legal team.

Jace H. Goins, Esq.
Steptoe & Johnson PLLC
Charleston, WV

At Fann & Petruccelli PA, we pride ourselves on the wide range and quality of services that our Legal Nurse Consultants offer to both our clients and legal team. Our Legal Nurse Consultants possess the clinical experience and knowledge necessary to assist our attorneys in understanding deviations in the standard of care, evaluate damages and interpret pertinent medical information from a wide variety of sources.

They not only provide us with medical record reviews and analysis, but also conduct medical research specific to case issues, identify and apply standard of care and regulatory requirements, educate attorneys about unique medical issues of the case and retain medical experts in a variety of specialized fields. Because our Legal Nurse Consultants begin to evaluate cases from the start of the litigation process, they are able to help us efficiently and effectively defend our clients and keep litigation costs to a minimum.

Donald J. Fann, Esq.
Managing Partner
Fann & Petruccelli, PA
Fort Lauderdale, FL
Tampa, FL

I wanted you to know that we had a very significant settlement in my client’s case, thanks in large part to my Legal Nurse Consultant’s pain and suffering report. Prior to my submitting the report, I had no settlement offer. Because of the underlying MS, this bus accident case was being vigorously defended on pre-existing conditions and extent of damages. After receiving the Legal Nurse Consultant report, the defense agreed to mediation.

I used eight full pages of the report to present the client’s course and scope of treatment in my mediation memo. I used other elements of her report as exhibits during the mediation process itself, like the fact that my client had not had a shower for 8 months since his accident. My client’s experiences were brought alive and made understandable. Her work made this case “real”. I owe my Legal Nurse Consultant many thanks and I look forward to working with her on other cases in the future.

Val Wilson, Esq.
Wilson & Johnson
Philadelphia, PA

Thank you so much for your work on my client’s motor vehicle case. As a direct result of your report and testimony, explaining the difference between my client's being cleared by neurosurgery (within 2 months of having a blood clot removed from his brain) and his ongoing rehabilitation process (over 2 years) which involved residual mild cognitive deficits, our settlement offer went from $400,000 to $675,000!

Ronald DeSimone, Esq.
Cherry Hill, NJ

I have been working with Legal Nurse Consultants for over twenty years and cannot imagine practicing personal injury law without them. Legal Nurse Consultants at our law firm play critical roles in virtually every type of personal injury case including motor vehicle accidents, product liability and medical malpractice cases. For all personal injury cases, they are able to identify, organize and summarize the medical records, identify and evaluate the injuries, analyze causation issues and assist with the medical portions of discovery responses. For the malpractice cases, they are also able to do research regarding the applicable standard of care.

In our experience, the more complex the case, the more the Legal Nurse Consultant can contribute. Thus, in the more complex personal injury cases, such as medical malpractice and pharmaceutical product liability cases, our Legal Nurse Consultants are involved from the initial intake call through resolution. In addition to obtaining, summarizing and analyzing medical records, they are involved in meeting with potential clients, following up with clients about their evolving medical condition, evaluating whether to investigate and undertake a claim, researching and analyzing medical liability and causation issues, identifying experts and serving as a liaison with medical and nursing experts.

Attorneys considering adding Legal Nurse Consultants to their team would be best served by nurses with excellent reading comprehension, writing, organizational and analytical skills, as well as a strong clinical background, work ethic and interest in learning the applicable legal standards.

Brian Zorn, Esq.
Faraci Lange, LLP
Rochester, NY

Our firm uses Legal Nurse Consultants in many aspects of our work. Legal Nurse Consultants play a vital role in both screening and prosecution of medical malpractice cases. They also play an important role in significant product liability cases, specifically in pharmaceutical product cases such as Vioxx.

Our nurses were extremely involved in screening the hundreds of potential Vioxx liability cases that were referred to us and in helping to determine which should be sent on for an expert review. They then were involved in putting the materials together for the expert review and in meeting with the expert to discuss the case. Their ability to organize the records into a format that medical experts can understand is unmatched and ultimately saves our firm money in expert fees.

For the Vioxx cases we ultimately filed that were transferred into the MDL the Legal Nurse Consultants were principally responsible for completing the complex medical portions of the plaintiff profile forms that were required in this mass tort litigation. In speaking to other firms involved in this litigation I learned that most others had to make significant modifications to the PPF forms after they were initially filed, while the ones my firm filed raised very few objections from the defense attorneys. This is an example of how Legal Nurse Consultants' training and experience make them invaluable and superior to paralegals for doing many medical related tasks that arise in this type of litigation.

In almost any complex personal injury case I would prefer to have a good Legal Nurse Consultant at my side from start to finish.

Stephen G. Schwarz
Managing Partner
Faraci Lange, LLP
Rochester, NY

Our firm has employed an in-house Legal Nurse Consultant for many years now. She works with our many attorneys on multiple issues and practices. Of particular interest to my practice is the work she does on the Worker’s Compensation files. She has been invaluable in recognizing the areas of strength and weakness of the cases from a medical perspective.

She helps me to fine tune deposition strategy when needed and provides an exceptional advantage in her role in identifying, retaining and working with the medical experts. Legal Nurse Consultants are able to digest, interpret and clarify voluminous medical records and provides key illustrative medical evidence when needed. Our Legal Nurse Consultant is able to accurately evaluate the pathological processes and issues of alternate causation. As a nurse, she understands the role of the case manager and issues of catastrophic injury. It has saved our firm immeasurable time and money to have a Legal Nurse Consultant working on the Worker’s Compensation files. I have found our clients are equally impressed to know I work with an Legal Nurse Consultant on their case.

Jessica L. Welch, Esq.
Law Offices of Doroshow, Pasquale, Krawitz & Bhaya
Wilmington, DE

When I first received the medical records to be reviewed for a particular case I had estimated that it would take 8-10 hours to complete my review. However, working with a Legal Nurse Consultant, I completed my task in only 3 hours. This expedited process occurred for several reasons. First, our pre-review teleconference provided me with a solid sense of the issues of concern. Second, the massive volumes of medical records were meticulously separated and ordered which allowed me to avoid getting stuck in the search process. Finally, our post-review teleconference was very instructive as I appreciated her clinical expertise in both the nursing and medical areas of concern in this case.

I am always extremely concerned about the economic cost of my consultant services, particularly in regards to the strained resources of most nursing home plaintiffs and their families. With the Legal Nurse Consultant's assistance and leg work I was able to complete my review and have a cogent discussion in the shortest time possible.

Thomas M. Naughton, MD, M.P.H
New Berlin, WI

Our Legal Nurse Consultant is my right arm when it comes to medical product liability litigation. As a trained Legal Nurse Consultant, she picks up the nuances of a case that an attorney can't. Not only can she decipher the medical language, but she puts it into a context that I can understand, teaching me the case as we go.

Her attention to detail is wonderful, she reviews the records over and over and researches the information that she doesn't understand herself. She gives me a summary of the records, plus an added column of information researched from other sources. She is very thorough. I couldn't do this type of work without her and I wonder how attorneys who don't have someone equally as good get through these cases.

Kathy A. Brown
Wexler | Toriseva | Wallace
Wheeling, WV

Whether the task at hand is evaluating new case inquiries in an emerging pharmaceutical mass tort or reading through hundreds of pages of a hospital chart in order to put together a chronology of what happened and when, Legal Nurse Consultants bring invaluable expertise to any firm whose practice requires even a basic knowledge of medicine. I have personally used Legal Nurse Consultants at almost every stage of a case.

A well versed Legal Nurse Consultant can screen damages issues in potential new cases, can help put together medical timelines for use at deposition or at mediation, and, to the attorney who knows more law than medicine, is a constant source of education and insight. Did your client receive the recalled medical device, and did she suffer from the target injuries that prompted the recall? Did the nursing and medical staff attending to your client while hospitalized conform to accepted standards of care? These and a myriad of additional questions can eat up endless attorney time. Leveraging the knowledge base of a Legal Nurse Consultant saves that time and results in better organization and preparation.

Jason Mark
Mark & Associates, P.C.
Uniondale, NY