Private Practice Forensic Psychiatry

Gain experience with a wide variety of civil and criminal forensic evaluations. Develop your interviewing and diagnostic skills in settings including hospitals, jails, prisons and outpatient facilities.

Our private practice rotation enables you to gain experience with:

  • meeting with clients to understand their evaluation needs
  • letters of engagement and contracts
  • calculating estimated time and costs for individual cases
  • accurately tracking time and expenses for cases
  • writing forensic reports
  • confidentiality for different types of evaluations
  • understanding laws as they apply to individual cases
  • testifying in court and depositions

Our training will help you understand the criminal justice process or civil procedure as it applies to each case. Moreover, our faculty members will work closely with you; you can expect to present every case to a supervisor.

We’ll help you increase your knowledge of retainer and payment arrangements for different types of cases and clients.

On average, you’ll conduct one to two forensic evaluations per month.

Diverse Clients and Cases

Our division has experience working with many different kinds of clients, and we’re eager to share our knowledge with you.

Our faculty members’ forensic consultations and independent evaluations have been sought by a variety of clients, including: 

  • attorneys
  • town, county and Supreme Court judges
  • colleges and universities
  • insurance companies and the law firms that represent them

Additionally, our faculty members provide consultations for:

  • Mental Hygiene Legal Service
  • Assigned Counsel Program of the Erie County Bar Association Aid to Indigent Prisoners Society
  • Attorneys for the Children Program
  • Federal Public Defender's Office for the Western District of New York
  • Niagara County Mental Health
  • Monroe County Public Defender’s Office
  • United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York
  • U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services, Western District of New York

During our private practice rotation, you’ll be exposed to a wide range of cases that involve issues such as:

  • competency
  • criminal responsibility
  • pre-sentencing
  • sentence mitigation
  • dangerousness
  • commitment of sex offenders
  • hospital retention (civil commitment)
  • testamentary capacity
  • custody evaluations for family court
  • fitness for duty
  • disability determination

You’ll see cases with our attending psychiatrists, and you can expect that we’ll involve you in testimonies and discussions with clients.

Length of Rotation

Approximately three hours per week for one year

Caseload

One to two cases per month

Training Sites

Locations of evaluations will vary. You may see evaluees in locations including correctional facilities, clinical settings and law offices.

Faculty and Staff

You’ll work with:

  • chair of the Department of Psychiatry
  • fellowship program director
  • experts on mood disorders, psychosis, psychopharmacology, difficult diagnoses, ethics conflicts in correctional practice, violent patients in inpatient settings