What is a Legal Nurse Consultant?

A legal nurse consultant, or LNC, is a registered nurse with years of clinical experience.   Having a nurse on your litigation team means efficient analysis of medical records and guidance for all aspects of healthcare litigation.  Legal nurse consultants have collaborated with attorneys for over 30 years, particularly in the areas of:

• personal injury and premises liability
• product liability
• medical malpractice
• environmental claims
• workers’ compensation
• nursing home litigation
• risk management

Legal Nurse Consultants are not paralegals or legal assistants; theirs is a subspecialty of nursing, not the law.

Most legal nurse consultants specialize in a few areas that reflect their past work experience, but certain commonalities prevail, in that all LNCs should be competent in:

• writing a technical report that everyone can understand
• organizing and analyzing medical records
• preparing medical chronologies and comparing them to allegations
• identifying standards of care, causation, and damage issues
• conducting relevant literature research
• providing education regarding healthcare facts and issues relevant to a case
• providing basic cost projections for  mediation
• assisting with trial and structuring deposition questions
• finding, screening, and preparing expert witnesses
• acting as a liaison between attorneys, experts and  consultants