The world of clinical negligence is facing and will continue to face major upheavals in the delivery of justice. The speciality depends on a heady witch's brew of claimants, doctors, experts, lawyers and judiciary, not to mention the political interests of the legislature, the financial interests of the accountants and, finally and most importantly, the moral interests of society. From our jaded perspective of about 40 years joint experience in the medico-legal skin trade we offer the benefits of our wisdom. In the dark moments late at night, answering difficult questions from lawyers, we do understand that 'Medical experts are like sewers - what you get out of them depends on what you put into them' (after Tom Lehrer) but we believe that the ideal instructing lawyer is able to prepare the scene in such a way that we can produce prompt, excellent and clear advice to our legal colleagues. In this article we set out to explore the relationship between medical experts and lawyers by examining the characteristics of the bad lawyer, as it was in the past, is now and might be in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]