By Michael Barr
Note: This article offers practical guidance for attorneys engaging technical experts. It is general commentary, not legal advice. Consult counsel about any specific matter.
Expert witness firms vet candidates in three broadly different ways, and the difference decides how much work is left for you. A directory checks that the person exists and has credentials. A referral service checks that they are available and will take the engagement. A firm that vets technically has an engineer read the candidate's work and question them in their own field before any name reaches an attorney. Barr Group does the third, at no cost to the attorney.
That distinction is worth being explicit about, because the word "vetted" appears on every firm's website and means something different at each one. What follows is what a serious vetting process actually consists of, so you can ask about the parts that matter rather than accepting the label.
Conflicts, before anything else
Nothing else is worth doing until conflicts are clear. That means the candidate against the parties, their counsel, the parent companies, and the prior engagements the candidate may not think to mention. A conflict found after a candidate has seen case material is a problem no amount of later diligence repairs.
Any firm should do this before it sends you a name. Ask when in the process it happens.
Domain match to the actual dispute, not the field label
This is where most of the value is, and it is the step most easily faked. "Software expert" is not a match for a case about interrupt timing in motor control firmware, and "electronics expert" is not a match for a claim that reads on physical die layout. Fields have layers, and a candidate is usually strong at one of them.
Good vetting starts from the technical question the case actually turns on, then finds people who have worked at that layer. It does not start from a category and filter downward. Our field guides, such as what makes a great electronics expert witness, set out the layer questions field by field.
Guides published so far cover electronics, pharmaceutical, AI, industrial controls, materials, and video game expert witnesses.
Someone technical reads the candidate's work
A curriculum vitae records claims. Papers, patents, prior reports, and shipped products are evidence. The difference between a firm that reads that material and one that files it is the difference between vetting and cataloguing.
At Barr Group this is done by engineers, which is unusual and is most of why we can tell a strong candidate from a plausible one inside a specialty. The question we are answering is not whether somebody is impressive. It is whether they have done the specific thing this case will ask them to explain under oath.
Testimony history, including what went badly
Depositions survived, trials testified in, and Daubert challenges faced. Everyone with a long career has been challenged, and a candidate reporting an unblemished record over hundreds of engagements is telling you something other than the truth. What matters is whether they can explain a challenge, the ruling, and what they changed.
Prior testimony is also discoverable and will be read by the other side. A candidate whose earlier positions contradict the opinion this case needs is a liability regardless of how good the analysis is. Once the expert is retained, the same reading is the first step in preparing a technical expert for deposition.
Can they teach it
The most decorated candidate who cannot explain their field plainly loses to a less decorated one who can. Juries decide on comprehension, and judges have limited patience for witnesses who retreat into jargon when pressed.
The only way to assess this is to listen to somebody explain something. We do that before recommending, which is why our process takes longer than sending a search result.
Availability, honestly assessed
An expert who cannot meet the schedule is not an expert for this case. That includes the report deadline, the deposition window, trial availability, and whether they are already carrying more matters than the calendar allows. Optimism here is a common and expensive failure.
Independence and how the firm is paid
Ask how the firm makes money, because it shapes what it recommends. A firm with experts on staff has an incentive to recommend its own. A firm paid a placement fee has an incentive to close. Our fee is built into the expert's hourly rate and we are paid only if you retain, which means a bad match costs us the engagement.
That is not a claim of virtue. It is a structure, and you should ask every firm what theirs is.
What to ask any firm
- Who performs the technical assessment, and what is their own background in the field?
- What did you read of this candidate's work before recommending them?
- What is their testimony history, including challenges?
- Which layer of this problem have they personally worked at?
- What would make you tell me this candidate is wrong for the case?
The last one is the most useful. A firm that has never talked an attorney out of a candidate is not vetting.
How we help
Barr Group is a broker rather than a roster. We search for the expert the case needs, our engineers assess them, and we tell you when a matter needs two experts rather than one stretched thin. That covers software and electronics, where our depth is, and it extends across medical devices, pharmaceutical and life sciences, materials and engineering, and economic damages.
The search is free and confidential for the attorney. Our detailed guide to vetting a source code review team covers the same discipline for code review specifically.
Tell us about your case, or browse the expert witness directory.