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SPECIAL FOCUS: EXPERT WITNESSES
	by
Carole Levitt President		Jim Robinson President
Internet For Lawyers		Jurispro.com
Founded in 1999 by attorney-speaker Carole Levitt, Internet For Lawyers provides law firms, corporations and professional associations around the country with turn-key continuing legal education seminars on utilizing the free and low-cost research resources available on the Internet. The company's seminars include: Cybersleuthing: How to Find (Just About) Anything on Anybody FREE on the Internet Do Your Due Diligence on the Internet: Conducting FREE Company Research FREE Legal Research Resources Online Super Search Engines & Super Search Strategies: The Invisible Web & How to Conquer it! Previous clients include: Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher Bryan Cave Lewis Brisbois Allstate Insurance So. Cal Fraud INvestigators Association		Founded in 1999 by a group of practicing attorneys, JurisPro is a free online national directory of expert witnesses and consultants in over 3,700 areas of expertise. When a legal professional visits the JurisPro web site, he or she can: View and download the expert's full resume See the expert's photo Hear the expert speak through streaming audio to get an idea of how the expert presents him or herself Read the expert's articles Contact their references Learn their background as an expert witness (number of times they have testified, for the plaintiff or defense, etc.) Access the expert's website Contact the expert directly without having to go through any sort of agency There are no charges of any type for legal professionals who retain experts they found on JurisPro.
This articles outlines time-efficient and cost-effective methods to locate expert witnesses and research their backgrounds using free and low-cost resources available on the Internet. It originally appeared in the July 14, 2003 edition of the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

At least once in their careers, most attorneys need to locate an expert witness for trial or pretrial consultation. Even if you find experts by personal referral, thus avoiding a search from scratch, you face the chore of conducting a due-diligence search to verify their credentials and research their background. Finding your own experts and checking their background, however, has become less of a burden with the appearance of numerous online expert-witness databases, many of which are free.

The Internet has many uses:

• Learn the subject matter well enough to be able to make an informed decision about the qualifications of a potential expert.
• Find the names, background and availability of the potential experts.
• Decide whether an expert will be a good witness should the case go to deposition or trial.

While expert-witness databases, which are searchable by expert name, location and expertise, are a good place to start your search, the Internet has additional resources. You can turn to usenet posts, discussion groups, jury verdicts, deposition transcripts, case law, trade or professional association sites and directories, library catalogs, indices to articles, university sites, and the individual expert’s own Web site.

Search Trade or Professional Association Sites and Directories Online
Attorneys who need an expert in an uncommon field or who simply do not know where to start a search for an expert can consult a database of associations. Some public libraries provide remote access to one of the largest of these association directories, the Encyclopedia of Associations. For example, the Los Angeles Public Library makes this directory accessible to anyone with a library card and an Internet connection. Using the encyclopedia, one can find associations that specialize in almost any field. Associations exist for nearly every profession and interest group, from chewing gum to bananas. If the association has a URL listed, scour the site for a list of research links to learn more about the topic. Also, take note of the association’s executive director or any of the association officers. Typically, their e-mail addresses or a link to it is be included. Attorneys can contact the director or one of the officers for a referral to an expert. As an alternative, simply use the contact information in the encyclopedia listing to call the association directly and ask for a referral.

Expert Witness Databases Through Bar Associations
To find experts, consider turning to your local bar association’s Web site to see whether it has created an expert-witness directory. For instance, in Los Angeles, attorneys can consult the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s online expert database, Expert4law, which has an overview on the effective use of an expert. The site contains six separate databases: (1) experts and consultants; (2) a lawyer-to-lawyer consultants network; (3) legal support services; (4) alternative dispute resolution experts; (5) research and publishing experts; and (6) law office technology experts. Expert4law offers focused searches, including keyword, location and a combination thereof. It also supports Boolean operators ("and," "or," "not") to make the search more precise. The results offer full contact information, with a link to the expert’s Web site and a list of the expert’s specialties, degrees and licenses. Experts register themselves on this site for $300. The San Francisco Bar Association also has an online directory of expert witnesses.

Mixing narrative descriptions with an easy-to-use template presentation, the American Bar Association's "The Lawyer's Guide to Fact Finding on the Internet" introduces you to hundreds of useful, free resources on the web to locate factual information. Click here for more information.

Free Online Directories for Expert Witnesses
The Internet has many online expert-witness directories. Many of the large legal portals, such as Findlaw, Law.com and Hieros Gamos have online directories with short biographies and links to the experts’ Web sites.

Built by practicing attorneys, the JurisPro Expert Witness Directory is a free national online directory of experts in thousands of categories.

When you visit www.JurisPro.com, you can view and download the expert’s full curriculum vitae; read the articles that the expert has written that discuss his or her areas of expertise; review the expert’s background as an expert witness (how many times the expert has testified, percentage for the plaintiff and defense); obtain contact information for attorneys who have worked with that expert in the past; see the expert’s photo; hear the expert through streaming audio to get an idea of how the expert presents himself or herself; and contact the expert directly. Using the experts from JurisPro involves no referral fees.

Expert-Witness Referral Sites
Expert-witness referral companies are similar to the expert-witness directories in that they maintain a database of professionals who are available for expert-witness assignments. The difference is that attorneys must pay an additional fee to the referral company to retain that expert. The benefit of these services is the large size of their database and the time saved looking for those experts who do consult and testify. The downside is that the user has to contact the referral company to get the expert’s name — and the added fee.

TASA, a site with 8,000 areas of expertise, is one of the best known of the expert witness referral companies. TASA displays only the number of experts in the selected field and their geographic location. Users call or e-mail TASA for the experts’ names and contact information. This is how TASA monitors use in order to add its flat fee to an expert’s hourly rate.

For referrals to medical experts, go to MedQuest. MedQuest provides referrals to testifying medical experts (medical doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists) in every region of the country. These experts provide evaluations for plaintiff or defense counsel in all types of health care-related malpractice, personal injury, and other tort litigation as well as criminal law.

The California-based ForensisGroup provides technical, engineering, medical, scientific and environmental experts. This company provides excellent customer service and specializes in construction experts. On the ForensisGroup Web site, you can view short blurbs about the expert before contacting this referral company to retain that expert.

Academic and Institutional Sources Experts, of course, abound in academia. A list of colleges and universities with links to their home pages also appears at American Universities. At Purdue University’s Web site, for example, a searchable database of professors with various areas of expertise is available for you to search by either the expertise or the known expert’s name. A search for an expert about tobacco results in four listings. If you have the names of experts who are professors, check their academic background with a search at their institutions’ site. Here you may find their résumé, a list of classes they teach and even links to articles they’ve written. This enables a lawyer who is searching for an expert to find and eliminate candidates if their credentials are not up to snuff. Many health care facilities and organizations have excellent directories for their doctors. A directory of 18,000 health care organizations, including ambulatory care facilities, assisted-living facilities, behavioral health care facilities (such as chemical dependency centers and development disabilities organizations), health maintenance organizations, home care organizations, hospitals, laboratories, long-term care facilities and office based surgeons can be found on the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations’ Web site.

Find Experts on Jury Verdict Reporter Databases
Jury verdict reporter databases, although selective because they contain only those verdicts that an attorney reports to the database publisher, can be useful for finding experts. By searching for an expert’s name, one may discover whether the expert has given opposing opinions in similar cases, appears more often as a defense witness or usually testifies for the winning side.

The attorneys involved in the cases also are listed in the jury verdict database and may provide information about their experience with the expert. Free online jury verdicts can be found at Morelaw.com. Paid jury verdict reporters can be found at the Daily Journal’s site and the National Association of State Jury Verdict Publishers’ site. Access to the Daily Journal site is limited to print subscribers only.

The National Association of State Jury Verdict Publishers site is available to anyone. Users search an alphabetical listing of experts and, after clicking on the expert’s name, are referred to the organization’s member who has detailed information about the verdict.

Search Case Law for Experts
An expert’s name also may appear in a reported opinion, and many reported opinions can be searched free. To find cases using a known expert’s name, type in the name alone, or add relevant keywords if the name is common. If searching for an expert in a specific area of expertise, type the word "expert" along with the expertise sought using relevant key words. For free case law searching, try LexisOne or Findlaw. To conduct retrospective or nationwide searches, you’ll need to use a pay database such as the major players, Lexis or Westlaw or some of the newer case law sites such as LoisLaw or VersusLaw. Lexis and Westlaw also have a variety of other tools for finding experts, including expert-witness directories.

Let’s Due Diligence
An accurate assessment of an expert’s qualifications history in court is essential. Compelling statistical evidence suggests that experts who have been allowed to testify after previous attempts to exclude them (that is, who have passed "Daubert muster") more likely will withstand similar challenges. Just as important, knowing the qualification history of your opponent’s expert can be valuable in challenging that expert or in developing a strategy to attack the expert’s methodology and credibility. The Daubert Tracker’s primary focus is the researching of the "evidentiary gatekeeping" history of experts. Daubert Tracker’s researchers cull through both reported and unreported cases to get accurate information about the names and disciplines of challenged experts and the dispositions of those challenges. You also can order and download briefs from Daubert Tracker that support or argue against the challenge of an expert from a particular discipline on a particular issue. Pricing options vary, but for $10 for a half-hour search, the peace of mind that comes with knowing you have completed this aspect of the due-diligence process is well worth the money.

Locate and Read the Expert’s Prior Deposition Testimony and More
Reading an expert’s deposition testimony can provide an abundance of information about how the expert may perform. However, no free, centralized database has expert-witness transcripts.

At TrialSmith, formerly known as DepoConnect, plaintiffs’ attorneys can access 73,000 online documents, including depositions, briefs, pleadings, seminar papers, verdicts and settlements. An annual subscription costs $195 a year, plus $30 per document. TrialSmith also has a private discussion group for attorneys to share information. Experts also may be referred to in briefs, which can be found at Brief Reporter. Searching is free, with fees of $10 per document and a $35 per month access fee.

For defense attorneys, full text copies of the expert’s testimony are available for a fee from Idex. Idex has built its database of deposition transcripts by submissions from its own members. (Electronic versions of some documents can be viewed and downloaded directly from this site at a reduced price.) Idex also has available information on previous cases in which the expert has given trial or deposition testimony. According to its Web site, 6,000 records are added each month to Idex’s database of 800,000 records of expert involvement.

On the plaintiffs’ side, the American Trial Lawyers Association Exchange makes available to its members a database of 10,000 expert witnesses and 15,000 transcripts. This database is developed by submission from its members.

As an alternative, try directly contacting lawyers who have worked with (or against) a particular expert, and request a copy of the deposition transcript from them. Most attorneys keep their own expert-witness transcripts and would be willing to share (provided, of course, the favor is returned some day). For example, the American Trial Lawyers Association posts the contact information for the member who provided information about that expert. The experts themselves often list the names of the attorneys with whom they have worked in the past on their Web sites, or you can ask the expert for a list of references.

Avoid Being Bitten
When an attorney retains an expert, he or she is doing so on an educated guess. You cannot predict with any certainty whether the expert will be effective at trial or how the expert will analyze the intricacies of the case. However, once you have located a potential expert witness, you can research that expert’s past to check for skeletons in their closets.

Has the Expert’s Opinion Been Consistent in Public Forums?
Learning whether an expert’s opinion has been consistent in public forums is often important. Such forums include conferences where he or she spoke, in online discussion groups (both the expert’s messages to the group and any references to the expert on a discussion group), the expert’s personal Web site, or even a Web site other than his or her own. Searching for an expert using a search engine is a way to capture any of these extra nuggets of "public" information.

What does the Expert Say at Conferences?
By typing the expert’s name into a general-purpose search engine on the Internet (such as Google), conference papers and even their PowerPoint presentations used at conferences can sometimes be found. To limit your search to PowerPoint presentations only, go to www.google.com and click on the "Advanced Search page." Enter your search (e.g. the expert’s name) and then select the File Format "Microsoft PowerPoint.

Has the Expert Been Posting in Usenet Discussion Groups?
Besides searching the Google search engine to learn an expert’s opinion on a particular topic, you also can search postings made by the expert if he or she participated in a usenet discussion group. These postings are searchable in Google Groups, a feature that is separate from Google’s general-purpose search engine. It contains more than 750 million posts dating back to 1985. To find the expert’s postings, users should conduct two different types of searches on Google Group’s Advanced Search page. First, search the expert’s name in the "author" field and second, search by the expert’s e-mail address in the "author" field. You might also learn what opinions others have about the expert by searching the expert’s name in the "key word field" (either in the "with all the words" box or the "exact phrase" box). Keep in mind that many people have more than one e-mail address, so try to discover all of them to conduct a complete search. Also, keep in mind that some people surf anonymously or with pseudonyms, so you may find nothing. Finally, remember that many people share even the most unusual of names.

Google Groups also can be used to search by topic to find experts or lay-people who may have encountered the same situation as your client. For example, "Firestone tires" may be entered as a search term into Google Groups to find others who have encountered serious problems with treads that have separated or to find experts who have been involved in tread separation lawsuits.

The Expert’s Web Site — Goldmine vs. Landmine
An expert’s own Web site should be carefully reviewed prior to retaining that expert. If a search engine did not locate the expert’s Web site, try simply entering the expert’s name or company name as a dot-com (expertname.com). Many experts post their full curriculum vitae, prior litigation experience, speaking engagements, references, memberships and professional organization affiliations, articles and newsletters on their Web sites. When reviewing an expert’s Web site, keep in mind that opposing counsel can do so as well. Be aware that experts’ Web sites are sometimes little more than self-promotion, so tread carefully. Is there anything embarrassing or contradictory on the site? Does the expert pronounce that he or she "is the leader in the industry" or put forth similar bravado that could affect how the jury perceives the expert? Imagine how the jury would react if the pages of the expert’s Web site were displayed as exhibits at trial — because they very well could be.

Ever been in trouble?
It is also important to determine if an expert has been reviewed or disciplined by their jurisdictional licensing boards. Although not a free search, Idex has created a searchable database for this purpose. To access this database, one must be an Idex member and a defense attorney (or work on behalf of a defense attorney). Also, check the licensing agencies in the state where the expert is licensed and search their professional association’s Web site for any discipline or malpractice information.

You wrote that?
You cannot depend on the expert to have posted all of his or her published works on a Web site, and therefore you must search on your own. For a nationwide search of newspaper or magazine articles written by (or about) your expert, you’ll need to use a pay database such as Lexis or Westlaw, but to access an individual newspaper or magazine (or a local newspaper or magazine that may be too small to be included in Lexis or Westlaw), the Internet is a perfect source. A list of newspaper URLs can be found at www.ceoexpress.com. A free search engine for finding and obtaining the full-text of articles is FindArticles.com, which contains articles from more than 300 magazines and journals dating back to 1998.

Some legal portals, such as Hieros Gamos, post articles written by experts. Many trade associations publish online newsletters, and some provide either full-text or extracts from articles. For example, the Accident Reconstruction Communications Network, a professional organization for those in the accident reconstruction industry, has a monthly newsletter with expert articles. This site also has an active discussion forum that includes opinions posted by various accident reconstructionists.

What Else?
Former government employees may make good experts and so may non-government experts who have testified before a Senate or House Committee hearing, for example.

Search Firstgov.gov by topic to locate a government document that discusses your matter at hand and makes references to experts. It indexes 51 million web pages from federal and state governments, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. Most of these pages would not be available on any commercial Web site. You also may locate experts in the legislative history of a bill. At the federal level, search full-text at Thomas for House and Senate Committee reports and at the state level, search legislative history (referred to as "Analysis" in California).

You may pick up the name of an expert or find a reference to a study that you could then track down in order to find the expert who prepared the study. You may also try to contact the staff person who prepared the Analysis (his or her name and phone number appear at the end, usually) and that person may be able to provide you with the study or other useful information.

To quote the authoritative "School House Rock" cartoon (and perhaps other less scholarly sources), "Knowledge is power." The Internet is a content-rich frontier. Using the information in this article, you can access the deep, well-lined pockets of information that abound in corners of the Web that are usually overlooked by the casual researcher.

Carole Levitt is President of Internet For Lawyers and vice-chair of the California State Bar Association’s LPMT Executive Board. Jim Robinson is an Executive Committee Member of the California State Bar, LPMT section, and president of www.JurisPro.com.