Letter · Health & Medical Law
Letter of instruction to an independent medical expert on breach of duty and causation (medical negligence)
A letter instructing an independent medical expert to give a liability opinion: the expert's duty to the court, the code of conduct, the documents, neutral assumptions, and questions on peer professional opinion, breach and causation.
- Kind
- Letter. A letter or email you adapt and send.
- Where it applies
- New South Wales, Australia
- AI use
- Yellow AI can help in set ways. A lawyer checks specific points before use.
- Law stated as at
- 18 October 2026
- Status
- Maintained. Checked on 18 October 2026 against the 5 authorities it cites, for New South Wales and Australia.
- Version
- 1
- Source
- Written for this library
When to use it
Use when instructing a specialist to give a report on whether a doctor or health service met the standard of care and whether any breach caused the harm, including the supporting report a professional negligence claim in NSW must be filed with. Use a separate letter for quantum experts.
How AI may be used
AI may index the records and prepare the chronology and document list for the brief; the lawyer frames the assumptions and questions, checks the brief is complete and neutral, and signs the letter.
AI may
- Index and paginate the clinical records and prepare a neutral chronology for the lawyer to verify
- List the documents enclosed and flag gaps in the records (missing dates, missing imaging)
- Check the letter against the code of conduct requirements and the court's rules on expert reports
AI must not
- Must not draft questions or assumptions that suggest the answer or leave out unhelpful facts
- Must not summarise the clinical issues in a way that replaces the records the expert must read
- Must not prepare any part of the expert's report, which is the expert's own work and subject to the code's generative AI rules
The lawyer checks
- The expert practises in the same field as the defendant practitioner at the relevant time, and has no conflict
- Every relevant record, helpful or harmful, is enclosed, and the chronology has been checked against the records
- The assumptions are stated neutrally and the questions track s 5O, s 5P and s 5D without leading
- The code of conduct is enclosed and the expert is told about the court's generative AI rules for expert reports
Method: how the Green, Yellow and Red levels are decided. This is guidance for planning, not legal advice.
Read the full text
The full text is for signed-in accounts. It is free. When you sign in you can:
- read the whole precedent, with its drafting notes beside it;
- copy it, or download it as a Word file or Markdown;
- add it to your firm’s knowledge base, so colleagues can find it;
- let the AI tools you connect read it from that knowledge base.
The summary, the law it rests on and the AI-use guidance above stay public. Privacy.
More in Health & Medical Law
- Practitioner's response to an Ahpra notification or proposed immediate action
- Patient authority to release health records to the patient's lawyer
- Patient information and consent form for AI scribes and AI-assisted care
- Request for access to health records (patient or authorised representative), with state and NZ variants
- Responding to a subpoena for medical records: health service checklist and production schedule (NSW courts)
- Advance care directive (Victoria): instructions note, completion and witnessing checklist, and decision-maker map
- Memo: is this AI tool regulated software as a medical device?
- Open disclosure follow-up letter after an adverse event (health service)
- Memo assessing a mandatory notification obligation under the National Law
All precedents for Health & Medical Law · Tasks and AI use in this area