Expert Witness Profiler

The Expert Witness Profiler provides information on an expert’s testimonial history.  If you are a valuation expert involved in litigation, it can be very helpful to have information on your opposing expert’s testimonial history.  You can run the preliminary report and provide it to the attorney and then decide if it’s it makes sense to invest in one of the other reports.

The Expert Witness Profiler Preliminary Screening Report is part of your BVDataworld subscription and is provided with no additional fee.  There are two other reports, for an additional free, that provide a comprehensive and cost-effective background report on expert witness in the United States making it an invaluable tool for both the valuator and the attorney.

The Expert Witness Profiler is comprised of three separate reports:

1. Preliminary Screening Report (Included in your subscription)
2. Challenge Report (Additional fee)
3. Export Witness Profile (Addition fee. Includes the Challenge Report)
4. Preliminary Screening Report (Included in your BVDataWorld subscription)

The Preliminary Screening Report gives you both a snapshot of an expert’s testimonial history and an assessment of how frequently the expert is called on as an expert. Most importantly, it is a tool to help you determine if there is enough information available regarding the expert to justify the investment in a full Expert Witness Profile.

The preliminary screening report also identifies challenges to the expert’s testimony in reported cases. Drawn from the broadest array of public and proprietary databases, these reports include the number of times the expert’s name was found in: Affidavits and Reports, Dockets, Federal Agency Decisions, Jury Verdict Reports, Motions, Pleadings, Briefs, Orders, Opinions, State Agency Decisions, and Transcripts and Depositions.

The preliminary screen reports cover fifteen data sources and shows how many hits there are in each of the data sources for the expert witness. Of special note are the two data sources that are related to challenges and exclusions. The challenge section covers twenty 23 challenge areas beyond the Daubert challenges.

The following shows a sample preliminary screening report:

2. Expert Challenge Study (Additional fee)

Arguably the most critical aspect of expert witness due diligence is the assessment of an expert witness’ prior history of being challenged/ excluded/ critiqued by the court because of his or her qualifications or methodology.

Like the Profile, the Expert Challenge Study is created by a team of professional expert witness researchers, all lawyers, who have access to databases not readily available to most law firms.

The type of issues identified include:

• The expert was deemed not qualified (unqualified).
• The expert’s methods were questionable, suspicious, not valid (invalid), lacking or inadequate.
• The expert was not credible (incredible) or believable (unbelievable).
• The testimony was outside the scope of the expertise of the expert.
• The testimony was not relevant (irrelevant).
• The testimony was not reliable (unreliable).
• The testimony was flawed.
• The expert’s methods were not scientific (unscientific).
• The testimony was speculative.
• The expert was deemed not competent, incompetent.
• The testimony was questionable.
• The testimony was predicated on an improper (or was lacking) foundation, basis or grounds.
• The testimony was based on insufficient evidence, false assumptions or evidence not in the record.
• The expert drew conclusions not supported by the evidence.
• The testimony of the expert was impeached.
• The testimony was based on methods which were unscientific (not scientific, junk science).
• The testimony would not assist the trier of fact.
• The testimony was, amounted to or drew a legal conclusion.
• The testimony was used to support a motion for summary judgment and the motion was granted/ denied.
• There were two conflicting expert testimonies, and the case was decided in the favor of one party (thereby implying that one expert’s testimony was given more weight than another’s).
• The testimony or opinion was conclusory.
• Any other assessment of the expert or his/her testimony which reflects on or affects the assessment of the overall qualifications and credibility of the expert – either in a good or a bad way, particularly critical comments of any kind by the judge who wrote the opinion (even if there was no formal attempt to exclude or limit the testimony of the expert on the part of one of the attorneys.

All of the data and information in the Expert Challenge Study is contained in the full Expert Witness Profile too.

3. Expert Witness Profile (Additional fee. Includes Challenge Report)

The full Expert Witness Profile report, which averages over 40 pages, is created by a team of highly trained attorneys who specialize in expert witness research and who use not only ALL of the major legal research databases, but also semi-private and even proprietary databases not readily available or even known to most law firms. The Profile includes information about an expert’s:

• Testimonial history Challenge (Daubert/Frye) history
• Disciplinary history
• Licensing and certifications (including verification)
• Educational background (including verification)
• Professional background
• Associations and memberships
• Personal information
• Publications
• Teaching and research
• Patents, trademarks, and copyrights (if relevant) and
• References in news, blogs, social networking, and more.

Where available, the Expert Witness Profiler also provides access to expert witness transcripts, briefs (including memoranda in support of or in opposition to motions to exclude testimony), and other relevant supporting documents. The Profile is an indispensable tool for attorneys and expert witnesses to use before retaining an expert or before opposing an expert in deposition or trial. The report is also useful to the expert witness to learn what attorneys know what about him or her, to eliminate surprises during the trial proceeding.

The first page of the table of contents of a sample report shows the breadth and scope of these reports.

For more details on Expert Witness Profiler click here.