subject: Methods for Helping your Lawyer Prepare to Question an Opposing Expert Witness [print this page] Methods for Helping your Lawyer Prepare to Question an Opposing Expert Witness
Remember that your attorney wants to slant the other expert's testimony to his advantage, just as the opposing lawyer wants to do to you. These lessons will help you to help your lawyer perform that more effectively. This starts with you reading everything the other expert has written in the case. His report may contain a rebuttal to what you wrote. He may have signed affidavits or declarations that affirm his support for technical positions in the case. And his deposition will contain valuable facts your attorney needs to know.
By this point, you have now conveyed to your attorney any errors, oversights, or mistaken assumptions the other expert has made. You can now help phrase questions that your attorney can use to call attention to those errors and point out the other expert's technical weaknesses.
Avoid offering advice about the obvious questions for your lawyer - he or she will be able to sift through the academic background and occupational expertise of the other expert to ask basic questions about them - and save your experience for defining technically precise questions. For example, if one part of the case requires civil engineering knowledge, but the opposing expert is a mechanical engineer, your questions can highlight the technical differences. This will help your lawyer to better demonstrate what may turn out to be a weakness in the other expert's credentials for this particular case.
Credentials and academic background are not necessarily the best place to find weakness in the opposing expert. Look at the technical procedures, industry logic, precise tests, and overall foundation which should support his expert opinions, and determine whether he missed an important technical step or failed to meet an important industry standard. experts with strong credentials do not always play the expert witness role well. They may fail to do the work that must be done to come to a legally defensible opinion or to express it in a court of law. Not only must an expert opinion be well-founded, well-documented, complete, and accurate, it must be reached by a logical process of steps that are proper, sufficient, and defensible.
The other expert's conclusion or opinion may even be proper, and any one of your colleagues might by and large accept it without contention. Part of your responsibility is to find out when the opposing expert does not carry out his expert witnessing part well and does not sufficiently lay a foundation for his opinion(s). Uncover the technical flaw(s) and leave the legal presentations to your retaining lawyer.
Being an expert witness is markedly different from simply being an accepted industry guru or an accepted specialist in your own field. comprehending this aspect of testimony will help you to make stronger presentations of your work, and will also help your retaining lawyer to ask more reliable questions of the other side's expert.
If an opposing expert does not realize that he has done his job poorly, point that out so your lawyer is better prepared to question him.
Helping in this way does not make you a biased advocate for your side. It reinforces that you are a team player, ultimately benefitting your client, your lawyer and yourself. Your reading of the opponent expert's deposition carefully will help your lawyer to prepare a better series of questions, and help you differentiate the other expert's methodology from your own careful and professional approach to your opinions.
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