How to Tell the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth The often-unspoken truth is that many deposition or cross-examination questions that expert witnesses in the field of forensic accounting, business valuation, or matrimonial litigation will be asked are written to make the truth sound like a lie and a lie sound like the gospel. This second article of the Unimpeachable Neutrality series offers proactive tips on how an expert witness can facilitate effective unimpeachably neutral expert testimony with unimpeachably neutral written testimony in the form of an expert report.
-
-
7 Keys to Becoming a Visible Expert In this article, Dr. Frederiksen discusses seven keys to becoming a visible expert.
-
How to Silence the Hired Gun While evidentiary rules and ethical codes issued by professional bodies like the NACVA and AICPA prohibit accounting and valuation experts from taking an advocate position, the adversarial nature of the U.S. legal system creates a market which at times demands a “hired gun” expert witness who caters their opinion of damages or business value to that which most convincingly favors the side that hires them. This article discusses an expert’s conceptual quest for unimpeachable neutrality and provides guidance on how to silence the hired gun, maintain one’s integrity, all while staying gainfully employed.
-
Can it Hurt the Expert? Mediation is a dispute resolution process. So, what is a process? A process is a procedure, a course of action, or a methodology. Mediation has been around for several thousand years, and the joint session has always been a pivotal part of that process. Historically, the mediation process included beginning with a joint session. Mediation is after all a facilitated negotiation. When individuals negotiate, they interface with one another, exchange information, and attempt to work out a settlement. Now some are abandoning not only the initial joint session, but also all joint interaction between the…
-
What to Ask and Look for When You Need a Forensic Expert In today’s legal environment, it is not sufficient to present unsubstantiated evidence. Many subject matter experts do not properly substantiate their findings. When hiring a subject matter expert, careful screening is crucial to choose an expert with superior skills and credibility. This article presents methodologies by which you can perform proper due diligence on your prospective subject matter expert.
-
Challenges and the Emergence of Peer Review Judges are often required to pick apart complicated expert analysis to assess the validity and reliability of an expert’s work when its admissibility is challenged. But in the professional domain, we would not expect a tax auditor to be able to analyze a report on macroeconomic theory. Why, then, do we ask courts to perform these analyses in fields from accounting to zoology? It stands to reason our courts need help. We propose that litigators and experts now have the chance to help courts, and in the process, serve their clients better. Litigators…
-
Correlating Patent Values with Prior Citations What is forward patent citation? Why is it relevant? In this article, the author answers the above questions and details how these may be relevant to a damages expert in a patent infringement matter. These experts may need to ascertain the value attributable to the patented technology at issue. While comparable license agreements may serve useful in providing a market-based approach to arriving at a value, the damages expert must also seek to apportion out the comparable patents related to the patented technology within the comparable license agreements from that of the intellectual property…
-
The Growing Importance of Social Media and Marketing Expertise Referrals are an old standard—perhaps the old standard—for growing your practice. For the better part of the last century, firms have worked under a simple assumption: do good work for your clients, network with referral sources such as attorneys and CPAs, and you will win new business through referrals. In this article, the author discusses the viability of this and emerging models.
-
The Importance of Being Truly Independent The rise of Daubert challenges to valuation experts has resulted in more than just the exclusions of valuation experts. When an expert is excluded for “subjective belief” and “unsupported speculation” by the court, a closer examination into such commentary made by courts reveals the increasingly problematic trend of experts failing to perform independent analyses.
-
Expert witness do’s and don’ts In this article, Ted Blodgett offers 10 do’s and don’ts to consider when serving as an expert witness.
-
Will the valuation report prepared by the non-accredited CPA be admitted? The author was recently involved in an Oklahoma domestic relations case where the opposing expert contended he did not have to abide by AICPA valuation standards, reporting or otherwise, since he was not a member of the organization. This article summarizes how this issue was handled by the Oklahoma judge.