In this chapter I use examples from real cases to illustrate aspects of the work of the forensic linguist. I concentrate on two topics: how to convey to a lay audience the weight of linguistic evidence and how to present that evidence orally in court. I discuss the theoretical advantages of using likelihood ratios to convey the weight of evidence and then present the practical difficulties as a result of which likelihood ratios are almost never admitted into courts in their raw form.

Once analysis has been completed, all experts are faced with two communicative problems: firstly, how best to explain their analysis and express the derived results in a report written for an audience of legal professionals and secondly, if later called give evidence in court, how to cope with the unusual interactional rules and still communicate successfully with the lay audience. All experts face these challenges, but expert linguists have two additional and unique problems. Firstly, lawyers and judges are also professionally and centrally concerned with the detailed analysis of language and may therefore believe that they do not need outside help from linguists; secondly, all native speakers are also, in some sense, experts on their native language.