There are three main reasons why psychiatrists are reluctant to testify in court. 1. The trial process, with its partisan approach and esoteric procedural formula, is bewildering and restrictive to the psychiatrist. Also the partisan position of the psychiatrist as expert witness makes it difficult for him to be completely objective. To remedy these situations, systems which use nonpartisan medical experts are coming into fairly wide use in criminal trials and are beginning to be used in civil trials. 2. Psychiatrists are reluctant to expose their patients' confidences. 3. The psychiatrist finds it difficult to evaluate the defendant by the M'Naghten Rule, the generally used legal test of criminal responsibility. This 'knowledge of right and wrong' test is less applicable to the realities of mental life than the New Hampshire Rule, under which the psychopathology of the defendant and its relationship to the commission of the offense is pertinent.