Legal Medicine: how many are there, and how many are in private practice?

National totals

What this specialty covers

The specialty areas of medicine concerned with matters of, and relations with, substantive law and legal institutions; such as the conduct of medical examinations at crime scenes, performance of autopsies, giving of expert medical testimony in judicial proceedings, medical treatment of inmates of penal institutions, the practice of trauma medicine in law enforcement settings, and other clinical practice and medical science applications in the fields of law, law enforcement, and corrections.

Reading the sole-proprietor share

For Legal Medicine, the sole-proprietor share describes how these records are categorized in NPPES, not the full range of forensic, correctional, or law-enforcement work a provider may perform. Because the field is self-reported in NPPES, it is an imperfect proxy for private practice and does not establish independent practice, ownership, or employment status.

By state

New NPI registrations by year

Counts reflect the year each NPI was first issued, among records still active today. The final year is partial: this data covers through 2026-01-11.

Data notes

• The sole-proprietor field is self-reported by the provider in NPPES and is an imperfect proxy for private practice.
• A sole-proprietor count shown as <11 is suppressed: the true value is below 11, which could include zero.
• - An NPI can represent an individual or an organization, so record counts are not necessarily counts of unique clinicians or practices.
• - A primary taxonomy may not capture every provider who performs Legal Medicine work under another primary specialty, and NPI data do not show workload or patient volume.
• Providers are counted once, by their primary taxonomy code only.

Source: CMS National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES) Data Dissemination file, FOIA-disclosable public data under CMS-6060-N. Aggregated by Hero EMR on 2026-08-03; deactivated NPIs excluded; specialty assigned from the primary taxonomy code (NUCC 25.1). Counts below 11 are suppressed. Individual providers are never published. All provider data pages.

Common questions