Membership Review 2022-23

Membership – 2022/23 in review

2022/23 was an exciting year of growth for our Institute. Thank you for making this possible, and for being a part of this diverse community. Before I go into more detail here are some of the highlights:

The EWI’s main strategic aims are to:

1. Enhance our impact by growing membership
    
2. Support the development and improve the quality of experts within the community
    
3. Advocate on behalf of the Expert Witness community
    
4. Deliver an excellent, sustainable and effective membership body
   
    

Enhance our impact by growing membership
 

We achieved our long-standing goal of ending the membership year with over 1,000 individuals in membership. We also welcomed 4 new Corporate Partners. While understandably a certain number of members retire from expert witness work and therefore resign each year, in 2022/23 we recruited more than enough members to make up for these losses.
 

We reviewed our member journeys and improved automated communications which has led to an increase in Fellows and Certified members. As you will know, we ourselves must undergo an annual validation regarding our processes and procedures in relation to Certification and I am pleased to report that the SQA (Scottish Qualification Authority) did give us a clean bill of health this year.  
 

This was also the year in which we increased our presence at external events. We promoted the EWI and its members at several conferences:
 

• Bond Solon, NIFA
• BMA Medicolegal Conference
• Iconic Medicolegal Conference
• Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists - Risk Management and Medico-Legal Issues in Women’s Health Care (Q3),
• British Indian Orthopaedic Society Conference(Q3)          
   

Support the development and improve the quality of experts within the community
 

We delivered 35 events ( 2 more than in the previous year) and saw delegate numbers rise significantly (684 -up by 136 from the previous year).  We also delivered bespoke training sessions to several companies. We made over 10 older webinar recordings freely available to members – if you haven’t had the chance to view them, I would encourage you to do so.
 

Our Core Competency Framework was downloaded 217 times. My particular gratitude goes to the Board of Governors who responded to 47 Helpline enquiries – almost double the amount compared to last year.

We have also seen a surge in requests for Mentoring relationships from our Provisional members.
 

Advocate on behalf of the Expert Witness community
 

Based on members’ feedback (for which we are grateful) we created and published a new print and online guide written specifically for the legal community “Choosing instructing, and working with an Expert Witness.” In addition, we launched a Legal e-bulletin. Both are free resources, and the e-bulletin deals with case law, process and expertise, links to further information available on the EWI website, and showcases our latest Certified, Fellow or Individual members. So make sure your Profile on ‘Find an Expert’ is up-to-date! Speaking of the Directory, we saw a 35% increase in the number of searches on the Directory and similar increases in the number of referrals compared to the previous year.
 

Last but not least, we spoke out about the issues that concern our members by responding to the following consultations
 

• MOJ Consultation on RTAs/Medical Reporting Agencies
   
• Providing feedback on the GMC's rework of their guide to Acting as an Expert Witness
   
• Scottish Civil Justice Council - New Civil Procedure Rules
   
• The Medical Protection Society’s White Paper on Expert Witnesses
   
• Civil Procedure Rules Committee - Expert Evidence and the Intermediate Track
   
• Criminal Procedure Rules Committee - Revised declarations
  
   

Deliver an excellent, sustainable and effective membership body

We will look to continue on our growth trajectory. We have identified a number of areas which can support this. We look forward to working closely with our existing members in 2023/24, whilst welcoming new individual and corporate members into the Institute.
 

At the beginning of this review I spoke about our diverse community. We still have a way to go in terms of gender equity but you will see that a huge variety of sectors are represented in our membership.
 

I would like to thank all our members for their continuing support and leave you with:
 

Keep in touch:

Your contacts: Wiebke Morgan: Wiebke.morgan@ewi.org.uk, Graeme Berney-Edwards: Graeme.berney-edwards@ewi.org.uk or write to membership@ewi.org.uk

Wiebke Morgan, Membership Manager

December 2023