Legal nurse consulting is a specialty practice within the nursing field that uses a registered nurse’s expertise as a health care provider to consult on medical-related legal cases. Becoming a legal nurse consultant (LNC) requires additional education, certification, and continuing learning. Registered nurses who take on this challenge are educated in the legal field and how the medical records and a patient’s history affect litigation. All nurses with clinical experience are familiar with reviewing and understanding medical records. Legal nurse consulting uses this foundational experience in health care to assist attorneys in understanding the medical aspects of their cases including terminology, sustained injuries, and how pre-existing injuries and conditions could affect the outcome of the case. While the attorney is the expert on legal issues, the legal nurse is the expert on medical issues.

Med Legal’s legal nurse consultants are highly experienced and specialized in both the clinical nursing arena and the world of litigation. All of our legal nurse consultants receive hands-on training and mentoring throughout their careers with Med Legal that takes their years of experience and prepares them to be the best in the business.

A good portion of the legal nurse consultant’s role is to draw out the facts in the medical records that will make or break a case in litigation. But their expertise really becomes necessary when they can connect the dots of the implications of what is in the medical records. Our proprietary collaborative review takes these skilled medical-legal professionals and pushes their analytical process to the next level, ensuring that all perspectives have been considered and communicated. As our attorney and insurance company clients know, the legal nurse consultant’s responsibility of analysis is critical to shaping a case and making litigation decisions.

In addition to playing arguably the most critical role of analyzer, the legal nurse consultant has many other valuable skills. A legal nurse is a great resource for providing research to understand an injury, condition, or product and its implications in litigation. As such, the legal nurse consultant also plays the role of an educator, whether the audience is an attorney looking for specific information or a legal team seeking a broad understanding of a topic.

A legal nurse consultant is also an expert in interpreting medical lingo, taking pesky terminology and making it make sense in layman’s terms. Having an interpreter who understands the language of medicine and the oddities of medical records also proves very useful in identifying gaps in treatment and in what’s available to review. Knowing the difference between what happened and what should have happened can significantly impact damages and even case outcomes.

Regardless of the volume of records, type of injuries, and phase of litigation, a legal nurse consultant is a vital part of any medical-legal case.