A Certified Legal Nurse Consultant, or CLNC, is a registered nurse who makes use of his or her existing healthcare experience and specialized training to act as a consultant on medicine-related legal cases. Fees are usually around $125–$150 an hour, making this certification a desirable one for many people. Very few attorneys are familiar with reading legal records or are capable of understanding the various subtleties and terminology of healthcare issues.
This can cause them problems in trying to get the best results for their clients, which is where legal nurse jobs come in. A legal nurse bridges this gap by being the expert on healthcare, the system, and nursing, while the attorney is the expert on legal matters. Since a quarter of the over-a-million attorneys out there deal with personal injury and medical malpractice cases, the role of a legal nurse is extremely important.
To become a legal nurse, you need to have an active RN license and the correct training. You may be of any age and practice across the United States. You may be called on to deal with a wide variety of cases, from auto-accident related neck injuries to high-profile cases and class action lawsuits. The majority of legal nurses do their consulting work from home, working independently for attorneys, though some provide their services to government agencies, private corporations, and insurance companies. There are many different options when it comes to consulting as a legal nurse, so you can choose how much you work and the work that satisfies you the most.
You may be called upon to conduct research, review records, identify standards of care, prepare summaries and reports on illness and injuries, and locate expert witnesses for court cases. You may even serve as an expert witness yourself, though the majority of people in legal nurse jobs do behind-the-scenes work. This is a specialized job and you are a member of the litigation team in many cases.
Clients who can benefit from your services as a legal nurse include healthcare facilities, attorneys (both plaintiffs and defense), insurance companies, other consultants, agencies of the government, and private corporations trying to identify and manage risks or set up quality assurance. While many of your cases will be based on medical malpractice situations, not all of them will be.
You may also deal with access to care, managed care, and denial of care situations, liability cases of all kinds, auto accidents, aviation accidents, railroad litigation, toxic mold, faulty products, and many other situations. Legal nurses give their opinion in cases relating to medical devices and drugs as well as non-medical products including cigarettes, cell phones, and household products.
The increase in environmental cases has brought more jobs for legal nurses, too, with practitioners called on to talk about pesticides, hazardous chemicals and situations in workplaces, exposure to secondary smoke, and more. Worker’s compensation cases and even criminal cases are also common.
As a legal nurse consultant, you will be able to apply your existing knowledge about nursing, the healthcare system, and health and medical related issues in general and make the attorney’s job much easier. The case will go more smoothly and will be a lot more effective, too. The legal profession needs medical insiders, and legal nurse jobs fit the bill. If you know the inner workings of the complicated healthcare systems in our country, you could be making more money and helping people with their legal cases, just by acting as a consultant.
Both in and out of court, legal nurse consultants are extremely valuable members of any litigation team, and medicine and health related cases continue to go up in number. More and more attorneys are taking on cases of this kind, and they need your help. If you have the experience and are already an RN, it is time to think about getting a legal nurse position. All it takes is a little extra training and you will be qualified to act as a consultant in these extremely important matters. Check out all your options and find out how you and others could benefit from your becoming a legal nurse.
This may be a lesser-known division of nursing, but it is an extremely important one in a large number of cases. Someone trustworthy and knowledgeable needs to be able to tell attorneys what is true and what is false when it comes to medical records, illnesses, standards of care, and the dangers of common products. That is why legal nurses are so vital to our court system and why they are in such high demand.
