Janice Dolnick Highlights Ethical Considerations for AI Use in Legal Nurse Consulting

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into medical-record review and litigation support, legal nurse consultant and legal forensic nursing educator Janice Dolnick is drawing attention to the ethical questions that accompany AI-generated medical chronologies.

Dolnick, also known professionally as Jan Marie, has worked in legal forensic nursing since 2009 and is the founder of the Institute for Legal Nursing & Forensic Science. Her attorney-facing consulting work operates through Legal Nurses for Justice, while the Institute serves as the educational and certification arm of her professional practice.

In a recent article published by Empowered Nurses, Dolnick examined the ethical and billing implications of AI-generated medical chronologies and emphasized an important distinction for attorneys and legal nurse consultants: organizing medical records is not the same as analyzing them.

A Medical Chronology Is More Than a Timeline

AI tools can process substantial quantities of medical documentation, identify dates and encounters, and produce condensed summaries. For legal teams facing large record sets, the ability to organize information quickly can be useful.

Dolnick’s recent experience, however, illustrates why speed alone does not determine the usefulness of a medical chronology.

In her July 31 article, Dolnick described testing an AI medical chronology platform on a case involving 1,118 pages of medical records. The system condensed the records into approximately 60 pages, but Dolnick found that the resulting document lacked the analysis and focus required for the particular case. She ultimately recreated the chronology herself, producing a much shorter report centered on the information the attorney actually needed.

The experience prompted Dolnick to examine where AI can assist legal nurse consultants and where professional clinical judgment remains essential.

“Generating a chronology and analyzing a case are not the same thing,” is the central distinction in Dolnick’s discussion. AI may organize dates and summarize documentation, but legal-medical analysis requires a deeper understanding of clinical context.

Human Review Remains Essential

For attorneys handling cases involving complex medical evidence, a chronology needs to do more than reproduce what appears in a chart.

Legal nurse consultants may be asked to identify inconsistencies, recognize missing records, examine clinical developments, assess the relevance of particular medical events, and help attorneys understand the medical evidence within the context of a case.

Dolnick’s current Certified Legal Forensic Nurse program reflects this emphasis on applied analysis. The program incorporates real-world case evaluations and guided feedback rather than relying solely on memorization-based testing.

That approach is particularly relevant as AI becomes part of medical-legal workflows. Technology can assist with information organization, but the final work still requires a qualified professional capable of checking the underlying records and determining whether the output accurately reflects the clinical evidence.

AI Does Not Transfer Professional Responsibility

Dolnick also highlights the issue of accountability.

If an AI-generated chronology contains an omission, inaccurate summary, or misinterpretation, the use of technology does not eliminate the professional responsibility associated with the resulting work product.

Her recent commentary notes that attorneys remain responsible for their work even when artificial intelligence is used as part of the process. The same principle has implications for legal nurse consultants: AI-assisted work should be independently reviewed rather than accepted simply because it appears comprehensive or professionally formatted.

For Dolnick, responsible AI adoption therefore means keeping qualified human professionals involved in reviewing, validating, and interpreting medical information.

Billing Transparency Becomes Part of the Conversation

The growing use of AI also raises questions about billing practices in legal nurse consulting.

If software can reduce the amount of time required for certain administrative or organizational tasks, consultants and attorneys must consider how AI-assisted work is represented to clients. Dolnick’s recent article specifically identifies billing as an ethical consideration as AI changes the amount of time required to produce certain types of medical-record work.

The issue is particularly relevant because the value of legal nurse consulting extends beyond the mechanical processing of records. Clinical experience, case analysis, identification of inconsistencies, and interpretation of medical information remain professional functions that technology does not automatically replace.

Dolnick encourages legal nurse consultants to consider AI as a tool that can support efficiency while maintaining transparency and professional accountability.

A Tool for Legal Nurse Consultants, Not a Replacement

Dolnick’s position does not frame artificial intelligence as something that legal nurse consultants should simply avoid.

Instead, her recent work focuses on responsible integration.

The Institute for Legal Nursing & Forensic Science’s educational resources currently include AI-focused training designed to help nurses understand how AI can enhance, rather than replace, clinical expertise and critical thinking.

This distinction is becoming increasingly relevant as law firms and medical-legal professionals experiment with technology capable of processing extensive medical documentation.

AI may help identify information faster. It may assist with preliminary organization. It may reduce repetitive administrative work. But the consultant still needs to determine whether the information is accurate, complete, clinically meaningful, and relevant to the legal question.

Connecting Technology With the Real Work of Medical-Legal Consulting

Dolnick’s perspective is informed by more than education. Her professional history includes legal forensic nursing work dating back to 2009, and her current organization describes her work as helping attorneys understand how clinical insight can affect complex cases.

Through Legal Nurses for Justice, Jan Marie and her team provide attorney-facing medical-legal consulting, while the Institute focuses on educating and preparing nurses for legal forensic nursing practice.

That connection between active casework and professional education gives Dolnick a practical perspective on how emerging technologies may affect the field.

Rather than measuring AI by how quickly it can produce a document, her recent discussion encourages legal professionals to consider whether the technology actually improves the quality and usefulness of medical-legal analysis.

Preparing the Profession for Responsible AI Adoption

As artificial intelligence continues to enter litigation support, legal nurse consultants will increasingly need to understand both its capabilities and its limitations.

For Janice Dolnick, that means preserving the role of clinical reasoning even as technology changes the mechanics of record review.

The future legal nurse consultant may use AI to locate information, organize records, or develop preliminary material. The professional responsibility, however, remains with the qualified human reviewing the evidence.

For attorneys, the distinction is equally important. A shorter chronology is not necessarily a better chronology, and a faster report is not necessarily a more useful one.

Dolnick’s recent commentary reinforces a practical principle for the medical-legal profession: technology can accelerate the handling of information, but professional judgment determines what that information means.

As AI-assisted tools become increasingly common in litigation support, Janice Dolnick continues to advocate for an approach that combines technological efficiency with clinical expertise, ethical responsibility, careful verification, and meaningful human analysis.

About Janice Dolnick

Janice Dolnick, also known professionally as Jan Marie, is a BSN, RN and Certified Legal Forensic Nurse and the founder of the Institute for Legal Nursing & Forensic Science. She began working in legal forensic nursing in 2009 and developed an educational and professional model focused on helping nurses apply clinical expertise within the legal environment. The Institute is the educational and certification arm of her work, while Legal Nurses for Justice is her attorney-facing medical-legal consulting business.