Having your own retainer agreement helps you to protect your interests while also demonstrating your professionalism. Second, and at least as important, if you do not have your own, you will undoubtedly be asked to sign an agreement drafted by the attorneys retaining you in the matter. Interestingly, their insistence on such agreements applies almost equally to experts that they have worked with previously, as well as to experts that they are engaging for the first time. First, attorneys, on average, are requiring signed retainer agreements in almost three out of four engagements (73%). Be Proactive On the Terms of Your Engagementsĭo you have a written retainer agreement? If not, there are at least three excellent reasons why you should. All you need is a video camera on your laptop, tablet or phone and an ExpertPages membership and you’re good to go.ģ. ExpertPages provides its members with an easy way to create and add videos to their profile pages. With relatively little cost and effort, experts can easily add videos to their profiles, giving prospective clients a better sense of how they might appear at deposition and/or trial. We know that because eight out of ten attorneys (80%) said that one of their most vexing problems in choosing a new expert is “Having a sense of the Expert’s appearance/demeanor at depositions or trial.”Ĭlearly, this is an issue for attorneys, and yet far too many experts rely exclusively on their CV and an outdated photo to reveal who they are and what they know. Who are you? What do you look like? Do you speak clearly, composed, and with conviction? Attorneys definitely want to know. Attorneys who hire experts know any error, no matter how trivial, can be seized upon by opposing counsel who will characterize the error as a deliberate falsehood or evidence of sloppiness, making you seem untrustworthy or worse, sloppy. And it’s important to remember that if an attorney sees something amiss – even a harmless oversight, such as not updating a resume to reflect you no longer hold a particular position, or a typo (which an attorney may regard as a sign of lack of attention to detail or carelessness) – that may disqualify you in the attorney’s mind. ExpertPages’ survey shows that a majority (61%) of attorneys who consider hiring an expert Always (40%) or Generally (21%) check out the expert’s CV. If you think that nobody goes over your CV with a fine tooth comb, think again. Here are the 7 steps every expert should take to enhance his or her practice.
The ExpertPages report uncovers data that is highly informative and useful, but the critical question for most expert witnesses is: “What can I learn from the data to help me enhance and grow my practice and generate more income?” Based on the data in the report, here are the key lessons I learned. Overall, the data reveals that attorneys have become more demanding and more involved in what their retained experts do and how they do it.
The report contains survey data that points to attitudinal changes amongst attorneys with regard to experts and reveals that some long-held assumptions made by experts are no longer true. Last year, ExpertPages released the Attorneys Survey Report, a key expert resource detailing how Attorneys search for, find, and interact with expert witnesses.
0 kommentar(er)
