I’ve had to do a great many medico-legal reports for solicitors over the years.  One thing was always clear – the reports my patients got from Drs and Orthopaedic specialists/Consultants etc were always heavily stuck in tissue based explanations and reasoning.  The mis-use and mis-understanding of ‘Waddell signs’ was one of the worst errors and often used to provide objective evidence that the patient was ‘exaggerating’, ‘malingering’ and only in it for gain…. All these so called experts proved to me was that their knowledge of pain and pain mechanisms was vitrually non-existant and their attitudes to pain sufferers was still deeply entrenched in the Cartesian model!

My report on this ‘whiplash’ related problem was long, but to present a fair case, it needed to be!

Gifford L S 1999 A medico-legal report to a solicitor. Manual Therapy 4(4): 229-235