This comprehensive webinar provides legal professionals with an essential, clinically grounded roadmap for navigating complex neurological evidence across criminal, civil, disability, and driving litigation. The session strips away complex medical jargon to clarify the distinctions between provoked and unprovoked events, focal and generalized seizures, and easily missed nonconvulsive “automatisms,” while deeply exploring the objective science behind human behavior during and after a neurological event. Through an illustrative emergency department case study involving alcohol withdrawal, the presentation demonstrates why behavior in ictal and postictal states is fundamentally reactive and disorganized—never goal-directed—rendering statements made by a patient during these periods legally unreliable and frequently mislabeled in medical records. Finally, practitioners will learn to spot diagnostic mimics like Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures (PNES), understand the limitations of objective testing (such as why a normal EEG does not rule out epilepsy), and evaluate the profound cognitive and behavioral side effects of common antiseizure medications, including the well-documented phenomenon of “Keppra rage” and the FDA’s class-wide suicidality warning.

Highlights (5-10 mins, each section) 

  • Seizures & Epilepsy: The Basics
  • Types of Seizures
  • Convulsive vs. Nonconvulsive Seizures
  • Behavior During and After Seizures
  • Mimics and Confounders
  • Diagnosis in Brief
  • Antiseizure Medications
  • Other Considerations

Objectives 

Upon completion of this course, the attendee will:  

  1. Distinguish between the clinical definitions and classifications of seizures, including focal, generalized, convulsive, and nonconvulsive types, to accurately interpret historical and modern terminology in medical records.
  2. Analyze patient behavior during ictal and postictal states to differentiate between disorganized, reactive neurological responses and intentional, goal-directed criminal conduct.
  3. Evaluate the legal reliability of statements and actions made by individuals in a postictal state or during alcohol withdrawal, accounting for documented amnesia, disorientation, and confusion.
  4. Assess the limitations of diagnostic testing, specifically recognizing why a normal EEG or imaging study cannot be used to definitively rule out epilepsy or a seizure disorder.
  5. Identify the behavioral, cognitive, and psychiatric side effects of common antiseizure medications (such as “Keppra rage” and FDA suicidality warnings) to effectively address issues of intent, compliance, and mitigating factors.