FAQs – Expert Witness Service

Please complete the ‘make an enquiry’ form.

If you are working to an urgent timescale, we can help. Simply email or call us and our admin team will do their best to arrange an associate to assist with your case.

 

For all of our core assessments covering both public and private family court work, we work to LAA (Legal Aid) rates. However, we do have specific arrangements with certain providers which work to different rates, and some of our specialist provisions (i.e. FASD assessment) will be charged differently. We are committed to transparency at all times.

Our admin team will do their best to provide a quick and efficient response to your enquiry. They will assess which of our associates would  be best placed to help with your case, and ascertain the timescales each suitable associate is able to offer. You will then receive the timescales, CVs and any other relevant information for all associates  in a position to help you.

If you are working to an urgent timescale, we can help. Simply email or call us and our admin team will do their best to arrange an associate to assist with your case. If we cannot meet your exact timescales, we will always offer options as close to your requirements as possible.

Timescales are valid on the day they are provided. However, we realise decisions often cannot be made until specific court dates. In such instances, please let us know what dates you will be able to provide final confirmation and we will ensure that timescales are held for you until that date.

Our core work is providing adult, child, and family psychological assessments within the family court system. This can include full psychological assessments in addition to cognitive and/or capacity assessments. We have specialists who work across both public and private law.

Additionally, our associates can carry out a wide range of specialist assessments either separately or alongside these core elements. We often have new associates joining us, bringing in new specialisms and areas of expertise.

If you have a specific issue requiring assessment which is a little outside the norm for a psychological assessment, it is always worth contacting us to see if we are able to help.

If some or all of our fees will be covered by private payers, our invoicing team will be in touch after you have instructed us to arrange for the relevant share of estimated fees to be lodged prior to the initial appointments taking place. Any necessary balancing payments or refunds will be dealt with once the final report is filed.

We are based in Norwich, Norfolk, however, our consultants are based across the East of England, London, and the Midlands.

Although we perform assessments in our own offices in Norwich (which are set up specifically to facilitate our work with children and families), we routinely travel to appointments in other reasonable locations.

Geographically, we cover the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire and the City of London. This is not an exhaustive list however, and we can certainly accommodate appointments based further afield, though this will depend on each associate’s  ability and willingness to travel.

As standard, we strive to offer at least one associate capable of delivering to timescales of 4-6 weeks. This may vary depending upon the nature and complexity of the case.

We can often offer cognitive and capacity assessment within just a few weeks (frequently two weeks from instruction).

For more complex assessments, timescales can be longer, and vary more considerably depending on the specific requirements. We endeavour to offer more than one associate for each case. We are always mindful of the needs of the children involved, for decisions to be made in a timely manner and, of course, for any work completed to sit within broader PLO timeframes.