Most "Worth It" Fellowship other than Child

[TexasPhysician]

I disagree. Forensics has good potential from a financial standpoint if you do expert witness work. Now if you combine forensics with child that may give an additional bump. This may not be true for most forensic psychiatrists, especially if you limit your work to clinical work. It is possible to do expert witness work without the fellowship but I believe the fellowship gave me a good edge to get referrals from a wide variety of cases.

Forensics can be quite lucrative if you build the right connections, but most don’t seem to have that ability.

Of the people I keep up with: I know 2 people that do a fair amount of forensics work. One has convinced some attorneys/judges that a report detailing how addiction rehab is a better plan than jail time is worth an impressive amount of money (I’m probably simplifying the typical evals done). Neither of the 2 friends heavily into forensics are fellowship trained. 2 of 3 forensic fellowship trained friends are also child trained. All 3 do zero to minimal forensic work each year. This isn’t a big N, so I suspect there is a lot of variation.

My point is more that forensics does not naturally lead to better compensated jobs. I don’t see anyone being handed more money because they have this fellowship alone. It does provide added potential for lucrative work if you actively network and market towards your forensics experience/credentials. The philosophical question in my mind is whether people that actively network and market couldn’t find equally lucrative positions as those doing a lot of forensics?

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[psyguru]

Forensics can be quite lucrative if you build the right connections, but most don’t seem to have that ability.

Of the people I keep up with: I know 2 people that do a fair amount of forensics work. One has convinced some attorneys/judges that a report detailing how addiction rehab is a better plan than jail time is worth an impressive amount of money (I’m probably simplifying the typical evals done). Neither of the 2 friends heavily into forensics are fellowship trained. 2 of 3 forensic fellowship trained friends are also child trained. All 3 do zero to minimal forensic work each year. This isn’t a big N, so I suspect there is a lot of variation.

My point is more that forensics does not naturally lead to better compensated jobs. I don’t see anyone being handed more money because they have this fellowship alone. It does provide added potential for lucrative work if you actively network and market towards your forensics experience/credentials. The philosophical question in my mind is whether people that actively network and market couldn’t find equally lucrative positions as those doing a lot of forensics?

For a non-forensics clinincian who markets/networks to make as much as an expert witness, they would likely need to make passive income (i.e., owning a private clinic with multiple clinicians). It would be rare for a clinical psychiatrist to charge the same per hour as an expert witness. Perhaps a highly sought out psychiatrist that has a wealthy clientele. However a forensic psychiatrist can also have a practice with other experts and have passive income. Most forensic docs I know have full time clinical jobs and would not have the available time to do much forensic work or grow an expert practice.

Regarding your friend that does those rehab diversion evals, unless it's private pay it may not be as lucrative as PI, multi-plaintiff torts, toxic torts, tobacco litigation (fyi I avoid tobacco cases) or will contests. Court funded cases are usually capped (at least in my state). Except for capital mitigation or other high profile criminal cases, most civil torts are larger cases than criminal cases. Of course one can do a high volume of smaller cases.