Medical-legal testimony bills under ML204 at $455 an hour, in quarter-hour increments of $113.75, with a two-hour minimum for depositions. Preparation and travel time are included. If the deposition is canceled within 8 calendar days, you can bill one hour.
That is a reasonable rate. It is not compensation for what a bad deposition costs you, which is a report a judge declines to rely on and a reputation among the firms that use you.
What the first thirty minutes are for
Competent opposing counsel does not start by attacking your medicine. They start by establishing what you did and did not read.
How many pages did you receive. When did you receive them. Did you review all of them. Did you review the records from Dr. Chen’s practice, and can you tell us what those notes said. Was there anything in the file you did not have time to review. What is your usual practice for reviewing records of this volume.
Every one of those questions is answerable, and answerable well, if the answer is grounded in a documented process. They are dangerous when the honest answer is “I skimmed it.”
The second line is chronology. When did the claimant first report low back symptoms. What is the date of the first documented complaint. Is that before or after the injury date. If you cannot answer these from the report, counsel has established that the report was written without a firm command of the timeline, and everything after that is downhill.
Where reports create their own cross-examination
Four patterns show up repeatedly.
Percentages without reasoning. An apportionment figure with no explanation of how and why invites twenty minutes of questioning that you cannot win, because the standard from Escobedo requires the reasoning and you did not write it.
Records referenced generically. “Review of the medical records indicates” is an invitation to ask which records, on what dates, and what they specifically said.
Internal inconsistency between the history section and the discussion. This happens when the history is dictated from the interview and the discussion is written a week later from the file.
Silence on the gaps. If there were no pre-injury treatment records, the report should say so. When the report is silent and counsel establishes the gap during the deposition, it looks like you did not notice.
Preparation that is worth the billed hour
You are paid for preparation. Use it on the file, not on rehearsing answers.
Re-read your own report first, cold, as if you were opposing counsel. Mark every sentence that would generate a follow-up question. That list is your deposition.
Then reconcile the report against the chronology. Every date you asserted should be traceable to a document you can name. If you cannot trace it in preparation, you certainly will not trace it under questioning.
Then decide, in advance, what you will say about limitations. What you did not have, what you would have wanted, what that means for the confidence of your opinion. Stating this calmly, on your own terms, removes it as a weapon. Being forced to concede it question by question does not.
The uncomfortable part
Most QME depositions go badly for the same reason most QME reports go out late. The record review was compressed, and everything built on top of it is thinner than it should be.
You can prepare hard for a deposition on a file you read properly. You cannot prepare your way out of a file you skimmed.
Where CUBEXLE fits
We prepare IME, QME and AME evaluators with chronological summaries, provider indices and case-specific analysis that you can cite by date and source. When you are asked what Dr. Chen’s notes said in November 2022, you have it.
For deposition preparation specifically, working from a structured chronology rather than the raw production turns a four-hour reconstruction into a ninety-minute review. That is time billed under ML204 that you spend thinking about the case.
If you have a deposition scheduled and a file you have not opened since you wrote the report, that is exactly the situation to hand us. Write to connect@cubexle.com.