Preparing for Your Initial Contacts with Attorneys and Clients as Their Expert Witness

Preparing for Your Initial Contacts with Attorneys and Clients as Their Expert Witness

Your first contact with potential clients will come from the client or his/her attorney. occasionally an attorney may call to check on your availability, interest, and on point qualifications. The lawyer may have gotten your name from a colleague, or simply looked you up on the Internet and found you listed on your own website or on an Internet-based registry of expert witnesses. occasionally, the preliminary phone call will come from a prospective client (plaintiff or defendant) who is simply taking a more hands-on approach to expert witness selection.

When someone calls, write down the date and ask the attorney or potential client's complete name and its proper spelling. Ask for their phone number. Take notes about the case as you chat, but not extensive or compromising notes. For example, an indiscreet attorney might say: "My client's guilty but I want to get him the best possible deal." Do not write those sorts of remarks down; the notes taken during that first phone call can become the first entry in a file folder in which you keep all notes and records for the case. Your notes and that indiscreet remark may become evidence that you might have to turn over. All the materials you review over the course of a case constitute your 'file folder.'

You may receive email from attorneys that contains information about their clients. Honesty and ethics require you to keep records of all email communications, including those you think the client or attorney should never have sent to you. Throwing away communications may constitute destruction of evidence.

If you have to organize voluminous records or files, label the boxes or the piles appropriately for the case, and include the attorney's name, phone number and case identifier on the outside or on the tab. You should add the attorney's number to your cell phone contact list. When the case completes, or you withdraw, contain final notes about how the case ended. If it ended in your withdrawal, note your reasons for the withdrawal. The attorney may ask you to return the materials that you reviewed, or sometimes to destroy them. Add a note to your file folder about the disposition of the evidence.

Initial contact with attorneys can also happen through email or fax. In any case, be prepared to give references. Sending an email or a fax may seem an impersonal initial contact, but it does save an attorney time. Be aware that if they are contacting you, they are probably contacting other potential experts as well. Respond quickly to the email, and then follow up with a phone call within twenty four hours.

It may be a paralegal or investigator who initiates the initial contact. It is best to ask directly if the caller is an attorney or holds another position on the case. If the attorney later does employ you to help with the case, your records should reflect the date you were first contacted, and by whom.

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