EXPERT GENERAL POLICY

EXPERT GENERAL POLICY

It’s a good practice to let your retained experts know your office policy or practices when you retain them. Here’s a very basic preliminary outline of such policies:

1.         Expert Reports. Please DO NOT send us any written expert reports unless we specifically request them. Our normal communication will be by phone call or personal meeting. We often need written reports at different stages of the trial   preparation, but it=s important that you wait for us to request written reports before providing them to us.

2.         Rate of Expert Work. Our clients ask us about the bills we send them for expert work.  We need to know the billing rate for expert services before starting work on the case. If different rates apply for different services we would like to know that. For example, if your billing rate is different for travel, deposition, trial, reading depositions etc. we would like to know that so we can advise our clients.

3.         Sending us your Bill. We provide our clients a monthly accounting of expenses incurred in their case. We would appreciate your billing us when you do the work and at  intervals of not less then once a month so we can keep our clients informed as to the costs in their case. If you are working on more then one client case, be sure to separately bill for each client for accounting purposes.

4.         Billing us  for Work Done. We send our clients copies of expert bills. Our clients often ask us about these bills. Itemization of the bill would be appreciated to the extent possible by you for this reason.

5.         Notification of Planned Work. We would appreciate your consulting with us before doing any additional research, investigation or work after your initial findings.

6.         Depositions. If your deposition is scheduled by the defense in this case, we will want to meet with you in advance of your deposition. Keep in mind that at a deposition:

(1)        The contents of your file are generally available to the defense including your notes, any letters, reports, billings, materials provided to you, your CV, your research and the rest of your file.

(2)        Opinions must be based upon Areasonable probability@ i.e. the opinion is more probably true than not true. Opinions expressed as Amaybe, perhaps, might, could, sometimes@ and opinions which are less than fifty one percent true are not admissible at trial and cannot be considered.

(3)        Under court rules we are allowed very limited rights to object or interfere with the deposition. You must be prepared for far reaching inquiries about you, your qualifications and your opinions.

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