Most dental expert reports I review in joint statement work are clinically competent. The dentist knows the records, understands the treatment, and can describe what went wrong. The harder part is translating that clinical picture into the legal framework the court actually needs to apply.
That gap matters. Breach of duty is not just poor dentistry; it is a departure from the standard of a reasonably competent practitioner in the same circumstances. Causation is not just a bad outcome; it requires establishing that the breach, on the balance of probabilities, caused identifiable harm. An expert who conflates these, or who frames an opinion around what they personally would have done rather than what falls within the range of acceptable practice, produces a report that is vulnerable to challenge and of limited use to the instructing solicitor.
I hold an LLM in Medical Law and a Diploma in Legal Medicine, both completed alongside clinical practice. That training was not academic box-ticking. It changed how I read a letter of instruction, how I structure an opinion, and how I approach areas like consent, material contribution and the limits of what I can properly say. When I write a breach of duty section, I am applying the Bolam test and considering Bolitho. When I address causation, I am distinguishing between contribution to risk and causation of damage. When I decline to express an opinion on something, it is because I understand why the boundary exists.
CPR 35 and Practice Direction 35 are not formalities. They set out the expert's overriding duty to the court, the requirement for transparency of methodology, and the need to distinguish between fact, assumption and opinion. Reports that ignore this structure tend to generate unnecessary Part 35 questions, delay proceedings, and create problems at joint statement stage that could have been avoided.
Solicitors instructing a dental expert should expect a report that is clinically grounded and legally coherent. The two are not in tension, but producing both requires more than clinical experience alone.