The involvement of special knowledge in criminal proceedings has always created the problem of assessing the reliability of conclusions formulated on the basis of their application. At the beginning of the 20th century, one of the ways to solve this problem was the expansion of competition between the parties. For a long time, in criminal proceedings, competition has not been actively developed due to the particular historical development of society and the state. In the same period, it became a separate medical profession and the formation of a domestic forensic medical examination took place. With the adoption in 2001 of the current Code of Criminal Procedure, competition as a principle returned to the domestic criminal proceedings (Article 15 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of Russian Federation. Competition of the parties). In the practice of forensic medical examination, little has changed, since, on the one hand, the involvement of an expert’s opponent in the process was difficult to implement, and on the other hand, his participation in criminal proceedings for several reasons had little effect on the outcome of case. At the same time, forensic medical examination remained an unshakable pillar in cases of crimes against health and life (and in other categories of cases whose corpus delicti provides for harm to health). The situation began to change rapidly from April 2017 after the coming into force of a number of federal laws that significantly simplified the organization of opposing an expert in criminal proceedings and created the conditions for a more critical assessment of an expert opinion. The purpose of the work is to analyze the consequences of federal laws for forensic expert practice.