Susan Jones, founder of SJ Consultancy, has been a town planning consultant for over 40 years. As an Expert Witness, she provides evidence at public inquiries, hearings and in court. Here, she tells us about her career; explains why she enjoys being an Expert Witness; and shares her advice for other Experts.

For paediatricians this is an example of how not to conduct an expert paediatric assessment and present the results to the court. It also illustrates some basic points applicable to all experts.

M v F [2025] EWFC 150 (B)

Mrs Justice Joanna Smith provides an incredibly useful judgment following the hearing at the High Court in March of this year. Previous case law and legal tests for gross misconduct were addressed and applied given that such allegations underpinned the case.  The parties adduced expert evidence to establish the value of shares on the assumption that warranties had been breached.This update focuses on both experts’ evidence given that the approaches were significantly different and that one was clearly preferred over the other.      

Inspired Education Online Limited -v- Tom Crombie [2025] EWHC 1236 (Ch). 

It’s impossible to ignore Artificial Intelligence (AI) which suddenly exploded into the public conscious a couple of years ago with the launch of ChatGPT. The term AI was actually coined in 1956, and some of the underlying mathematics has been around for centuries. What changed everything was the emergence of transformers, a technology that was developed at Google that has enabled software to interpret complex human language and offer a remarkable facsimile of intelligent dialogue.

AI is infiltrating almost every area of human endeavour, so it is inevitable that it will impact your practice as an expert witness. In this introductory article, AI practitioner and Expert Witness Dr Richard Marshall discusses: the power and pitfalls of AI tools, and how AI will affect the matters on which experts opine.

Few reported cases assist as to expert evidence in cases of harassment and on the issue of injury to feelings as distinct from psychiatric injury. This summary should be read for this reason. It illustrates how the expert should respond to less than neutral instructions. It illustrates how cardiological evidence was analysed in order for the court to conclude that the defendant’s course of conduct had caused a myocardial infarction. It also reveals the charitable aspect of pro bono legal practice.   

Wei v Long [2025] EWHC 912 (KB)

The defendants denied the validity of a will on the grounds that the testatrix lacked testamentary capacity. The judge found that the conclusion of the jointly instructed expert as to testamentary capacity was inadequately reasoned and evidenced.

Carolyne Mary Parfitt v Victoria Jane Jones & Anor [2025] EWHC 1552 (Ch)

The Civil Justice Council (‘CJC’) is intending to review its ‘Guidance for the instruction of experts in civil claims’ with a view to considering whether the Guidance was still useful and whether it should be updated. The CJC would be interested in hearing about any issues which they should consider as part of that review, including any broader policy issues which the CJC should consider. We've included some indicative questions in this article and would appreciate your thoughts. 

One of the key roles of the Expert Witness Institute (‘EWI’) is to ensure that policy, rule and regulatory changes are informed by the experience of our members, and the needs of the expert witness community and the wider justice system. In this update, we discuss policy developments and our advocacy work over the last few months.   

This case is of obvious importance to experts authorised by the Family Court to be instructed in public law proceedings but it has implications for all experts whose fees are to be paid by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA).

K, Re & Re S (Legal Aid: Experts' Fees) [2025] EWFC 100 

The court noted that the jointly instructed expert demonstrated a clear lack of understanding of both CPR 35 and the duties owed to the court by an expert in allowing someone else in this firm to answer CPR 35 questions on his behalf. His report was also entirely equivocal on the key issues and therefore offered little or no assistance to the court.

Kate Rodgers v Laural Brookes [2025] EWCC 31