Well written expert’s reports are generated and drafted in the expert’s head as he or she does other things – walking the dog, sitting in a meeting, driving here or there. It’s a form of brain storming.
For certain, critical passages in a report – e.g., the opinion, are often developed in this way. Then thought out and refined on “paper” – the word processor today.
At times any scrap of paper that’s handy will do to capture sudden insight into the data from a forensic investigation. Then expressed and refined later on a word processor. I’m sure you’ve all had this experience in your respective fields.
I go through this process all the time in writing my forensic reports. It’s done best if it’s allowed to take a number of days, sometimes weeks. I’m nervous and suspicious of quickly written and issued expert`s reports.
The wordsmiths amongst you will appreciate this approach. You know you get better reports in your work when you are able to allow this process to take place.
I thought of this process in the last couple of days as I was finishing a forensic engineering report. The report was on the reviewing of pieces of information from different documents, visual assessments on site, and interviews of others. It was a grind for a time trying to pull the data together, to find reason and meaning in the lot.
Then the dots connected in my head between different bits of data and the cause of the failure jumped out at me. I quickly got it down on “paper”, thought it through some more, refined the additional thoughts that were generated – and then stood back and felt good that it had finally come together. I thought afterwards how I was thinking on “paper”. (Ref. 1).
This process also characterizes my blogging which, a little aside, has also improved my forensic report writing. The need to be exact is common to both. My thinking develops in the same way both in my head and on the blog template – the “paper”.
What’s great about technology today is every revision, all the editing, all the jumping around on “paper” is recorded in the WordPress program I use for blogging. I can revisit a past revision made days earlier and way down the list of revisions and tweak some more and put back in my blog.
The “tracking changes” feature possible in a Word document does the same thing. It allows you to capture all your expressed thinking on “paper” allowing you to go back, resurrect a revision, refine and tweak it some more and get it right.
This thinking on “paper” is quite satisfying. I know it’s resulting in better forensic reports for all concerned and likely, in some way, more thorough forensic investigations. You can’t prepare a well written report and formulate a reliable opinion unless you’ve carried out a thorough forensic engineering investigation.
References
- Howard, Ph.D., V. A. and Barton, M.A. Philosophy of Education Research Centre, Harvard University, Thinking on Paper, 1986, Morrow and Company, New York