Finding the right expert witness is winning a battle.
The vetting process is what wins the war.
In most cases, each side will find a qualified expert witness for its position.
But a "qualified" expert witness isn't always the BEST expert witness. The objective criteria are just the beginning of the vetting process.
Your expert witness should be VETTED & VERIFIED™.
Trust but verify.
Even the BEST expert witness on paper can be a minefield of explosive revelations if the credentials are not verified before the other side finds an error, or worse a falsified claim.
According to a recent webinar presented by LexisNexis,
1 in 10 expert witnesses falsify credentials.
Hardly any attorney would disclose an expert witness without vetting. But "vetting" can be as simple as asking the expert witness to verify certain facts on his or her CV. You want to trust what the expert tells you, but volumes of case law indicate that vetting is not always equal to veracity.
VERIFICATION is often the missing piece of the vetting puzzle. And that is what we do.
How far do we go?
That is up to you. We provide three levels of VETTED & VERIFIED REPORTS™.
Using our decades of research experience and our proprietary methods, we will verify as much as you want us to. We can scrape the surface with a spade, dig beneath the surface with a shovel or leave no stone unturned with a backhoe.
We reverse engineer every expert witness CV and, to quote Steven Covey, "begin with the end in mind". The "end" is that critical moment when the opposition cross-examines your expert or you cross-examine theirs. What we are looking for that could be "the smoking gun" or "the skeleton in the closet". You definitely want to know this about your own expert witness as early as possible in the process, before a Daubert/Frye hearing and certainly before deposition. And finding the weak links in the opposition's expert witness is your duty, especially under the emerging technological competence requirements.
We investigate every aspect of the representations made by the expert witness, not just in general, but for YOUR case. For example, if you are trying a case involving aviation and the expert witness claims to have had a pilot's license since 1978, when we find that it is actually 1985 and that it has been suspended twice, that misrepresentation could disqualify the expert. If the same expert witness is a doctor testifying in a medical malpractice case and misrepresents his or her experience as a pilot, it is certainly a point to consider for veracity, but probably not fatal to that expert's engagement as a doctor.
What is included in my Vetted & Verified Expert Witness Report?
In a nutshell, whatever you want.
We can tailor our research to specific areas of inquiry of concern to you, or we can use our proprietary resources developed over 30 years of experience with expert witnesses to find every detail.
Here is just some of the information we can include in our Reports:
- Older versions of CVs
- Older versions of directory listings
- Older versions of expert witness websites
- Daubert/Frye challenges and disqualification history
- Social media profiles
Here is a more comprehensive, but not all-inclusive, list:
- Case law where the expert witness has been engaged including Transcripts and Expert Witness Reports
- Case law involving the expert witness as a party
- Judgments and liens
- Arbitration and administrative agency decisions
- News articles
- Professional licenses and any complaints filed against the expert witness
- Criminal history
You can also choose the Report format that works best for you. We can:
- supply you with the raw data for your own interpretation
- analyze the data for you and present you with a concise summary of the information you request
- provide a comprehensive detailed report of all of our findings
- add a complete legal research compendium including cases, statutes, rules of evidence, and other primary authority that may apply to issues raised by the data in the Report.
Trust our REsearch professionals to find the Elephant in the Room.
Don't ask the question if you don't know the answer.
This quote has been attributed to legendary litigator Irving Younger, known as "The Master of Trial Advocacy". While Younger died over 30 years ago, his presentations and his wisdom are still often used in teaching the fundamentals of litigation. His "Ten Commandments of Cross-Examination" are the source of the quotation: "Never ask a question that you do not know the answer to. Cross is not a fishing expedition in which you uncover new facts or new surprises at the trial."
Let us find those answers.
