Medicolegal Neuropsychological Assessments
Neuropsychological assessments are considered to be medicolegal when they are intended to be used in the legal system in any way.
Examples of medicolegal assessments include:
- Assessments which will be entered into evidence in a court case
- Assessments which provide evidence about a person’s capacity to give legal instructions or give evidence in court
- Assessments which are specifically requested by a court or a legal practitioner
IMPORTANT: Dr Kelly Bryden also provides medicolegal assessments through other organisations. If you are being assessed through another organisation, please contact them directly for booking and quotes.
Frequently Asked Questions
- The assessments are longer: Assessments that are designed for use in the legal system usually require more assessment to support the neuropsychologist’s professional opinion.
- The reports are longer: The questions that need to be answered by a medicolegal assessment are usually complex and require explicit explanation in the report.
- There is more background information to review: There are usually more medical and other documents which need to be carefully reviewed when considering expert opinion.
- Any assessment report can be submitted to the court as evidence in legal proceedings.
- However, assessments that are conducted for medical purposes (e.g. for diagnosis, to inform support needs, to review progress) will not usually provide the right information that is needed in a legal context.
- Our medical reports have a statement on them that they may not be sufficient for medicolegal needs.
- Medicolegal assessments are generally charged per hour and includes GST.
- You will be provided with a quote before the assessment begins.
- The hourly cost includes face-to-face assessment time, as well as other time spent scoring, reviewing documents and writing the report.
- Depending on the complexity of the case, an assessment may take 15-20 hours to complete.
- The quote will not cover additional costs like meetings with solicitors, additional amendments to the report (not discussed in the legal brief/ consultation) and attendances in court.
- First, we need a legal brief – this is a letter from your legal professional or the court which outlines what questions they would like the neuropsychologist to answer.
- Then, the neuropsychologist will have a consultation with you to identify your needs (one hour, phone, videoconferencing or in person).
- Then we will provide a quote for how many hours we estimate it will take.
- Once you (or the person funding the assessment) agrees to the quote, we will provide some options for assessment dates. Assessments are usually conducted over two full days in our office (other arrangements are possible if required).
- We will request certain background documents like medical files or school reports.
- We will then write the report which summarises the background, provides the results of the assessment, and provides opinion regarding the medicolegal questions.
- We can generally get an assessment in within a month of the quote being approved.
- The report takes about two weeks to write.
- This timeline depends on whether all of the relevant information is provided (e.g. background documents).