I was talking with a defense attorney yesterday and commiserating about the increase of doctor depositions. The new statutes intended to reduce dueling doctors by the use of agreed medical examiners and panel qualified medical examiners. The purpose was to reduce litigation costs. And in the long run this may be the result. In the short run there seems to be an increased need to depose the AME or QME to clarify the med-legal report. These depositions require travel, attorney time, doctor fees (usually about $500 per hour), and court reporter fees, clearly an added cost in the process. Eventually it may not be necessary to do as many of these depositions, but that is not the case yet.