This is a private publication by solicitors Edge Ellison of Leicester. It is beautifully printed and produced as a wire-bound, stiff cover booklet so that it lies open at the page you want.

In writing it, the anonymous authors have consulted practising experts and the Academy of Experts. It is in seven short sections, starting with 'Role and Importance', through getting proper terms of appointment to the giving of oral evidence. It deals with the questions of privilege. It is written with the new Civil Procedures and Court Practice directions that came into force at the end of April (1999) this year. Most importantly it is well cross-referenced. Edge Ellison promises to revise and republish it from time to time as the law develops.

It sets out the Woolf declaration of accuracy and truth. It contains several checklists, lots of excellent advice, eg 'avoid unnecessary jargon', 'give reasons for your opinion where there is a range of opinions (possible)' and how to draft supplementary reports. It has a page on courtroom etiquette, and how to address, or refer to, judges, counsel and arbitrators, of both sexes and, most valuable, how to behave under cross-examination.

If I can criticise it, it is that the book and pages are square, so that it does not fit well on the bookshelf, and the wire binding does not allow a label on the spine. Those are small defects, and everyone who contemplates taking instructions as an expert ought to have this book beside his desk. With the introduction of the need for experts becoming more crucial and their accuracy, competence and in-court behaviour being closely scrutinised (see Cresswell, J in R v Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering Limited [15 February 1999, CWL 1493, following his previous judgement in the Ikarian Reefer, and Kim Franklin's article in the Architects' Journal, 29 April 1999, page 52), this is a refreshing and pithy document. Edge Ellison are to be congratulated.