splik's advice is good, particularly the idea that most foresnic-work is done by non-forensically trained people. It depends on your location.
The challenge with this is that you then don't know if you're providing poor services or not. One of the benefits of a fellowship is that you get exposed to LOTS of other forensic psychiatrists and their reports and many of them are truly awful. Some come from forensic fellows, but the majority I've seen have come from folks without the training. Evaluating someone, writing a report, and testifying as an expert is very different from most of psychiatry residency. So you can quickly see who hasn't been trained in forensics when they get deposed or get on the stand. They can get taken apart.
A few other comments.
I have not heard of attorneys looking for board certified forensic psychiatrists. for civil forensics work, they are looking for someone who is an excellent clinical psychiatrist and can lay claim to having expertise in a particular area.
Kind of. When attorneys look for someone, they are not looking specifically for a board certification in forensics. They are looking for expertise. Some attorneys may just look for clinical accumen, like you describe, but those attorneys are in the minority, in my experience.
Attorneys don't look for psychiatrists with expertise in a particular clinical area, they look for psychiatrists with expertise in
testifying in a particular clinical area. When you field calls from attorneys, you will get a few questions about your clinical expertise, and they'll ask for your resume, but they'll also want a list of how often you've testified about a particular area. A forensic fellowship gives that experience and reassures attorneys. Many attorneys have had their case fall apart because they get some expert in a subject area that gets absolutely taken apart on the stand because they lack the training.
you certainly do not need to be fellowship trained to do disability cases, worker's comp, psychic injury, malpractice, fitness for duty etc. If fact, for malpractice cases it is an advantage to not be forensics trained or have done a lot of them, because you are there as an expert as clinical psychiatry and don't want to look like a hired gun.
This isn't true. Malpractice cases are the ones in which attorneys most want a polished forensic psychiatrist. Malpractice cases are very high dollar and there is a lot at stake. For criminal cases, you typically have the lowest barrier for entry, since it's relatively low impact for all the players involved (other than the defendant and victim/victim's families). For malpractice cases and civil cases, there is a lot riding on it financially for the players involved (and their lawyers).
The "hired gun" thing is often misunderstood. You definitely don't want to be one, but that's easily avoided. Hired guns really come in two flavors: a) psychiatrists who primarily just do forensic work and little clinically and b) psychiatrists who always testify for one side. Most successful forensic psychiatrists avoid this reputation by spending a lot of time maintaining a clinical practice and taking care in selecting cases so that they don't always testify for one side.
But no successful attorney is going to actively rule out forensic psychiatrists for civil cases. Bad strategy.
You can skip a forensic fellowship and do some foresnic work. The question is how much you want to do, how good you want to be at it, and how much of a priority it is for you. It's pretty similar to other fellowships: there is very little hard and fast rules prohibiting you from doing anything you want in psychiatry, but there are some very good clinical and strategic reasons for doing so.
