This 27th article of the Unimpeachable Neutrality Series offers a conveniently alliterative detour en route to providing unimpeachably neutral and effective expert services.
You raise your right hand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Your hand has a slight shake to it, which is the coffee talking rather than the anxiety of the moment. Direct examination goes the way direct examination should: your counsel walks you through the report you wrote, the schedules appear on the screen in the order you built them, you teach the jury the difference between revenue and earnings. Meanwhile, two jurors are taking notes, which is the expert-witness equivalent of applause. The truth is easier taught than fiction, and your unimpeachably neutral opinion is translating beautifully into unimpeachably neutral expert witness testimony. There is nothing to compose up here, nothing to recall under pressure, and nothing to fear. Every answer was written months ago, checked twice, and tied to a schedule, so testifying feels less like performing and more like reading aloud from a book you happen to have memorized because you wrote it.
Then your counsel says, “no further questions,” and you notice opposing counsel arranging a stack of documents tall enough to need its own chair, your report flagged in 11 colors that do not appear to be organized by affection, and a yellow legal pad is being handed to them by the opposing expert. It is time for cross-examination. The trier of fact studies your every word and movement similar to the way people study a new neighbor. Whether your cross-examination will go well was decided months ago, but you are the only person in the courtroom who knows.
This 27th article of the Unimpeachable Neutrality Series offers a conveniently alliterative detour in route to providing unimpeachably neutral and effective expert services.
Discovery Assistance
The most effective way to utilize an expert is to engage one early, while discovery is still open, because sufficiency is decided in discovery, not in the report. Retained at the 11th hour, an expert inherits whatever the file happens to contain; retained early, he helps shape it. I assist counsel in assessing what has been produced, what is missing, and what to request while there is still time to request it (i.e., the tax returns and the general ledgers behind them, the native accounting files, the bank statements that prove or disprove both). And when opposing counsel hands you a spreadsheet of their expert’s making, treat it like any other exhibit: ask for the native file, check the formulas behind the figures, and decline to adopt arithmetic you cannot inspect. A printout is a picture of math, not math. The same service runs in reverse; an expert who reviews discovery responses before they go out the door spares everyone the amended answer that becomes a soundbite later.
Deliverable Expert Report
From that record comes the deliverable report, and most cases end with it. Build it on sufficient relevant data and reliably applied methodologies, which readers will recognize as the shared language of Daubert and our professional standards, and which I treat less as a legal test than as a writing instruction. Sufficiency means the data I rejected appears alongside the data I relied upon, with the reason for both, because that which is hidden today is that which you were “afraid to disclose” tomorrow. Reliability means the methodology is identified, applied, and reconciled in the same way in every engagement, regardless of who is paying, so that the approach can be checked by anyone and bent by no one. Assumptions are numbered and supported; methodologies are cited.
Prior to finalizing your expert report, it is often helpful to fully engage the strongest argument against your own conclusion (whether in your work papers or inside the report), so the opposing expert arrives at their best material and finds the door already closed and the porch light off. The first exit opens here: most of my engagements settle soon after the report is served, because a genuinely neutral number leaves the other side very little to rebut, and even less that their client wants to hear.
Deposition Testimony
If the case survives the report, the deposition follows, and the deposition fight starts before you are even sworn in. When the subpoena duces tecum arrives, do not plan on showing up to the deposition with a banker’s box and a prayer; produce the entire electronic file as a single Bates-stamped PDF, every page numbered in sequence. The document games that consume the first hour of most expert depositions die quietly when every page in the room already has a number on it. “Yes, counsel, that is Bates page 001473” is a complete answer.
A few technical pointers multiply the value of that production. Make the PDF text-searchable and bookmarked by workpaper section, so that any page can be located in seconds, and bring it on a tablet or laptop whose only contents are the production itself; what you search during a break should be exactly what they already have.
When the examiner questions you about a document, ask to see their copy of the document; you are entitled to read that which you are being asked to swear about. If the copy handed to you is his working copy, read it twice; the margins are sometimes the most candid document in the case, and occasionally contain the notes or questions the deposing attorney intends to ask three pages from now. I am also fond of opening an answer, with complete sincerity, with two words: “Great question.” It costs nothing, buys the half second a careful answer deserves, and tells the room the witness is enjoying himself, which unsettles an examiner more than any objection. And when the answer turns specific (Schedule 7, line 14, the column titled Adjusted Marital Estate), turn to the court reporter and slow down; the transcript is the only witness in the room that never forgets.
Mind that transcript, because the deposition is a soundbite harvest. Loyal readers will recall from my last article the soundbite trick: a single sentence clipped from a report or transcript and reintroduced later as though it were a confession. The defense begins at the deposition, where the soundbites are minted. Testify in complete thoughts, so that every sentence carries its own context on its back. And when a clipped quote is eventually read to you, ask to see it, then read aloud the sentence before it and the sentence after it. A sentence written to be unimpeachable in context usually remains so out of it, but make the room hear the context anyway; nothing deflates a gotcha like the rest of the paragraph.
Delivering Trial Testimony
If the case is still alive at trial, the work is mostly done, and the witness has one job: do not undo it. While counsel examines you on one track, the trier of fact examines you on a second, silent one, and the silent exam never recesses. Keep your table clean. Opposing counsel will hand you documents at a pace calculated to bury you, until the witness stand looks like the desk of a man who has lost control of his practice, because that is the picture the jury is being invited to draw. One document at a time; review, answer, return. The orderly table is not housekeeping. It is testimony. Take the question from the examiner and deliver the answer to the people deciding the case; an expert who teaches plainly is harder to dislike than one who testifies defensively. Make eye contact, whether it be a bench or jury trial. This applies even at an evidentiary hearing, so never minimize the significance of speaking clearly and directly to your audience. Look at the person talking to you and then at the person or persons you are speaking to.
Technology belongs at trial too, provided it serves the teaching. Build schedules to be read from the jury box: one idea per exhibit, fonts that survive a courtroom projector, and totals that land where the eye expects them, because the schedule that cannot be read from 20 feet does not exist.
The favorite scientific-sounding question will arrive: “What is the error rate of your analysis?” It comes dressed in Daubert’s clothing and is usually fishing. The unimpeachable answer is a question: which rate, and for which assumption do you need it? An error rate belongs to a measurement, not to an opinion; my discount rate has a sensitivity, my growth assumption has a range, my opinion has a basis. Make the examiner pick one, then answer the one he picks. And when a perfectly sound answer earns the Tucker stare (head tilted, brow knitted, mouth slightly open, a deadpan pantomime of disbelief performed for the jury), understand that it is bait. The amateur fills the silence, restating, softening, appending a clause nobody asked for, and the appendix, not the answer, becomes the exhibit. Answer, stop, and let the silence belong to them; asking the next question is their job.
What should an expert do when a well-compensated professional publicly attacks his opinions? When the cross-examination fails to gain points on the merits, do not be surprised if a meritless line of questions follows. Do not fear being accused of bias or untruthfulness, as this is a very good sign that opposing counsel has given up trying to paint your methodology as unreliable or misapplied and gone straight for the knockout punch. Indignation reads as fear; over-explanation reads as a witness with something to bury. Concede the obvious (yes, I am compensated) and let the record answer, because that is what you built it for. Do not return the negativity and only respond with a carefree flurry of honestly humble responses, as if speaking to a grandparent blaming you for sitting on a remote control you can clearly see is on the coffee table.
Dispute Resolution
The fifth and biggest “D” is dispute resolution. Dispute resolution can arrive before the report or after it, before the deposition or after it, the night before trial testimony or, as I have personally witnessed, in the hallway while the expert sits in the gallery waiting to be called. Every prior stage opens an exit; a candid assessment in discovery, a neutral number upon service of the deliverable, a transcript with no soundbites worth harvesting, a witness who cannot be rattled at trial. The exits are all the same door. A party walks through it the moment continuing the fight stops making sense, and the unimpeachably neutral expert hastens that moment at every stage, not by advocating for resolution, but by removing every honest excuse to avoid it.
Zachary Meyers, CPA, CVA, has been retained in over 4,000 cases as a testifying, consulting, or joint/court-appointed expert. He has testified and been qualified as an expert specific to civil, marital, and criminal litigation. He is a nationally recognized authority in forensic accounting, business valuation, and taxation. As the Managing Member of C. Zachary Meyers, PLLC, he provides expert litigation support to courts and legal professionals, whether as a testifying expert, consulting expert, or neutral/court-appointed expert. Mr. Meyers serves as a member of the Appraisal Standards Board (ASB) of The Appraisal Foundation, where he plays a key role in the development and interpretation of the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP). He serves as an advisor to the NACVA Standards Board and represents the United States on the GACVA Advisory Council. He was named to Forbes’ inaugural 2025 Top 100 CPAs for Valuation Services and received Marshall University’s 2023 Alumni Award of Distinction. He is the author of the Unimpeachable Neutrality series.
Mr. Meyers can be contacted at (304) 690-2619 or by e-mail to czmcpacva@czmeyers.com.
