53 LAWYER MONTHLY EXPERT WITNESS AWARDS 2025 “Easy” he said, “Establish what his office did that it shouldn’t have done, then what it didn’t do that it should have done. Write it all down clearly: Job done!” Not bad advice: I completed my report, the instructing solicitor and Insurer liked it, settled the case, and followed up with a seemingly never-ending stream of repeat instructions. My, how things have changed since then. Everything was done on paper, and I created my ‘core bundle’ from several crates of correspondence, drawings and photos. There was no IT support to conduct word searches and no electronic highlighting or marginalia: it was all marker pen, pencil notes and colour coded ‘post-it’ stickers which I used in abundance to structure my research. This was all done at the eve of the word processing/IT revolution: I typed my report on an Olivetti manual typewriter - it was all carbon copy paper and “typex” corrections in that primitive pre “tracked changes” world. How did we manage? From those humble beginnings my experience and reputation as an architectural expert quickly grew to a point where ‘forensics’ (as the Americans quaintly call it) would become a steady 25% of my practice turnover. All achieved through simply responding to demand, and of course, providing a reliable and competent service! Apart from the fees, ever useful in levelling out the fluctuating cash flows of an architect’s office, I learned an enormous amount and fed lessons learned into our own CPD so that my partners and our team could further build their own experience. And as a columnist, I also frequently used cases, appropriately anonymised, to inform my weekly articles which became a popular and much valued source of guidance to the architectural profession. What key qualities and expertise do you believe are essential for being an effective expert witness in complex construction disputes? Seeing the ‘wood for the trees’, good, old-fashioned storytelling capabilities, and a clear writing style: an expert must distil the essentials from the morass of inevitably complex information that arrives, and once that is done, should weave the response into an accessible, jargon free and compelling narrative that reliably and fairly “sets out the stall”, even if mistakes have to be admitted. Structure is critical: I aim to tell it clearly, tell it straight, and tell it right so that my reports become the ‘go to’ document that is relied upon by all parties, for all aspects of the case. Arguments should be set out intelligibly, and supporting, wellillustrated evidence should be incorporated as the narrative proceeds. I always ensure that my reports can be read as “An expert must distil the essentials from complex information and weave it into an accessible, jargonfree narrative.”
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