One of the biggest expenses faced by litigants is the expenses of experts. Whether the matter involves medical malpractice, professional liability, construction defect or personla injury, the use of experts is almost unavoidable. I'll post much more on this subject as time goes by, but here's some initial suggestions on using cost effective experts.
1. Analyze your case to determine what expert opinion will be needed.
2. Are there any free experts available? Surprisingly, this answer is often "yes." I do a lot of real estate and construction work. The real estate brokers and the site superintendents employed by my own often make great experts. Often protoges and mentors of my health care clients also make great experts. Treatign physicicans can be experts and so can technicians and repair contractors. Some cases involve issues important to trade associations, who will provide experts. There are pitfalls in using "free experts" but these should be considered ona cost benefit basis.
2. Next, inspect the expert's qualificiations to see if the expert is actually qualified to give the opinions that need to be given.
3. Work with the expert for a scope of work section of an expert's written retainer/contract. This is important to give the expert an idea of what's needed, prevents misunderstandings, and is the basis for the next step:
4. Prepare a budget with expert and client/claims adjuster agreement and input.
5. If it's necessary to go over budget, be sure to get client and expert agreement before additional work is undertaken.
6. It is usually much cheaper to arange for necessay documents and test results to be delivered to the expert than to have the expert obtain them.
7. Nothing saves costs like frequent communications regarding goals and progress. Don't ignore your experts
I repeat: this is the beginning of a series of posts discussing experts. The economical use of experts is critical to the success of a case. There's much more to come.
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