Today's practicing physicians and attorneys can be assured of increasing contact with the legal and insurance issues stemming from the adverse consequences of a patient's injuries or illnesses. Mounting litigation involving alleged medical negligence as a cause of personal injury, and expanding social legislation and insurance programs which provide benefits to injured or disabled persons, their dependents, or their beneficiaries has required an increase in the medical problem issues encountered in processing and resolving contested claims. Evaluations of such claimants by physicians are essential to the proper handling of their legal and insurance claims.

Medical evaluations performed specifically to provide information to the legal system and the expression of medical opinions formed after such evaluations constitute an area of medicine best termed Forensic Medicine. The traditional concept of “forensic medicine” was limited almost entirely to the medical investigation of the causes of death and the results of trauma, injury, and violent crimes. Forensic medicine practitioners were generally restricted to pathologists who performed medicolegal autopsies.