Psych Record Review
- Dr. Mark Lerner
- Oct 31
- 2 min read
Updated: Nov 21
by Mark D. Lerner, Ph.D.
Clinical & Forensic Psychologist
"In just days, Dr. Lerner provided critical questions that reinforced our legal strategy—the most unsettling questions for their expert."
Attorneys routinely receive psychiatric, psychological, and other mental-health documentation—progress notes, session notes, medical records, education records, and depositions. Yet even the most experienced litigators are rarely trained to enter the murky waters of human emotion. As a result, attorneys may find themselves confronting complex psychological documentation without the specialized knowledge needed to fully interpret, challenge, or strategically leverage it.
This is precisely where Psych Record Review becomes invaluable. A skillful, targeted review can yield compelling questions for the opposing expert—questions so precise and strategically powerful that they may, in and of themselves, obviate the need for further costly, time-consuming forensic psychological evaluation. In some cases, a Psych Record Review can effectively use the opposing expert’s own documentation against them.
Psych Record Review empowers plaintiff and defense attorneys to confirm or challenge claims of emotional distress, pain, and suffering with confidence. Through a meticulous, evidence-based analysis, this process helps determine whether the alleged precipitating event was truly the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s psychological symptomatology and functional impairments.
In matters involving fitness for duty, fitness to practice for healthcare providers, teaching, or administrative responsibilities, Psych Record Review is invaluable in exposing weaknesses, inconsistencies, and vulnerabilities in an opposing expert’s methodology, reasoning, or conclusions.
Dr. Lerner provides attorneys with precise, targeted, and strategically impactful questions to pose to psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and counselors during depositions and trials.
Psych Record Review enables plaintiff or defense counsel to:
• Identify strengths and weaknesses in clinical documentation
• Interpret psychometric test results through a forensic psychologist’s lens
• Isolate critical findings often overlooked in clinical practice
• Formulate “unsettling” questions that many mental-health experts are unprepared for and don’t want to be compelled to answer under oath.
Unlike a treating professional or testifying expert, Dr. Lerner serves exclusively as a forensic consultant, operating under attorney-client and work-product privilege. Because Psych Record Review does not involve evaluation, diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of psychological disorders, it is not considered the practice of psychology. This distinction has allowed Dr. Lerner to collaborate confidentially with attorneys nationwide.
With a unique understanding of emotional distress claims, fitness-for-duty assessments, and fitness-to-practice matters—combined with well over three decades of specialized forensic experience—Dr. Lerner offers attorneys strategic insight, clarity, and powerful support at any stage of litigation.
Personal Note:
Psych Record Review has become my niche. Of all the forensic work I’ve performed, I find this service uniquely fulfilling because it genuinely empowers counsel to pursue justice with precision and confidence. There’s something profoundly meaningful about helping attorneys use the record itself—their opponent’s own documentation—to illuminate the truth.