How to document a facial injury

The photographic series

You want a comparable series, which means consistency matters more than image quality.

• Start at the emergency room, before repair if anyone can manage it
• Then daily for the first week, weekly for two months, monthly after that through the first year
• Same three angles every time — straight on, left profile, right profile
• Same lighting and roughly the same distance. Natural indirect light beats flash
• Neutral expression in one frame, then normal expression — some scars only distort in movement
• Include a ruler or a coin for scale in at least some frames
• Keep the original files with their metadata. Don't rely on images sent through messaging apps, which strip data and compress

The medical record

Get and keep everything: emergency records, operative reports, imaging, every follow-up note, and every referral.

The journal

A short contemporaneous record of the daily impact carries real weight, precisely because it was written before anyone was preparing for litigation.

Mistakes that cost value

The common ones are avoidable.

• Settling before the scar has matured
• Posting about it on social media — insurers look, and a smiling photograph gets used out of context
• Gaps in treatment, which get argued as evidence you weren't really affected
• Not treating the psychological impact, which leaves a real injury undocumented
• Giving a recorded statement early, before you know the extent of the injury
• Losing the before-photographs
• Not photographing the early stage, which is when the injury looks worst and most clearly establishes severity