First Out-in-the-World Lawyer Job

I have my first lawyer task. Tomorrow morning I'll be driving down to Daly City to attend a client's Independent Medical Evaluation. Basically, if your claim involves a physical injury, the defense has the right to submit you to an evaluation by their physician.

Despite the title, the IME Doctor is in no way independent. He is there at the behest of the insurance company. They pick and pay for the IME physician. And his job is to try and trip up the client, or to otherwise provide the insurance company with a seemingly reasonable medical opinion that justifies denying benefits or reducing the eventual settlement amount. The IME does not exist to help the patient in any way. While the Doctor's hippocratic oath prevents him from psychically harming the patient, it certainly doesn't require him to protect the patient's legal interests.

While it would probably be unfair to say that an IME is incapable of neutrality, the reality is that it's insurance company dollars that are keeping the lights on for these folks. So it goes, there's every financial incentive to approach the evaluation through the prism of presumed fraud on the part of the patient.

My job is straight-forward: make sure the Doctor doesn't tread into areas he shouldn't. The defense has a right to a "physical examination." This doesn't include asking the client about the circumstances surrounding the incident. This doesn't include asking the client about any prior injuries either. He gets to ask about the condition of the ankle. That's it. If this strikes you as odd, don't worry, the defense has had plenty of chances to ask all the other questions, including our client's deposition.

The best-case scenario is the Doc sticks to asking the client only about how his ankle is doing, reducing my job to just sitting there and looking pretty. The worst-case scenario is the Doc attempts to abuse the fact that I'm greener than a Berkeley tree-sitter -- including asking impermissible questions or big-dogging me with his years of experience. We'll see how well that goes down.

The name of the game here is Us v. Them. On one side: me, a tape recorder, and our client. On the other side: an M.D. with years of experience and the collective moral support of the entire insurance industry. That's only a slight overstatement.