Expert insights, legal technology trends, and best practices for working with expert witnesses
Texas approaches expert disclosure practically — expose what the jury will hear, protect how it was developed. The result is a system that serves both transparency and the integrity of the adversarial process.
A shopper slips in a grocery aisle. A patient sues a surgeon. A tenant's apartment burns down. Different cases, different experts — but underneath all of them sits the same quiet machinery: an insurance policy deciding who pays and how much. Six experts, from a fifty-year "coverage terrorist" to plaintiff and defense attorneys who watch insurers from opposite sides, explain why the people who understand that machinery remain litigation's most overlooked witnesses.
Category: Communication Between Experts, Decision-Makers and Counsel - Tribunal questions before an expert's opinion is filed and questions after look similar but carry very different risks: post-report questions test a fixed conclusion, while pre-report engagement can shape one still being formed. This piece contrasts the two, and shows where each is actually the right tool.
Category: Communication Between Experts, Decision-Makers and Counsel - Two versions of the same case: one where the tribunal engages with expert reports only at the hearing, one where it asks narrow clarifying questions within weeks of filing. The second consistently runs smoother, not because the technical questions changed, but because early questions resolve confusion while it's still cheap to fix.
Category: Communication Between Experts, Decision-Makers and Counsel - A decision-maker with a quick, narrow question for an expert faces a real tension: direct contact is efficient, but private contact excludes the opposing party and risks the fairness of the whole proceeding. This piece weighs both sides and shows how transparent alternatives capture nearly all the benefit without the risk.
Category: Communication Between Experts, Decision-Makers and Counsel - Most first procedural orders schedule dates for expert evidence without designing the process itself: what a joint statement must cover, how disputes get escalated, how multi-expert dependencies get sequenced. This is a practical drafting guide to expert-related directions specific enough to actually work, without crossing into substantive engagement.
Category: Communication Between Experts, Decision-Makers and Counsel - Most tribunals leave the expert process largely to the parties, out of caution about appearing to prejudge technical questions. This piece argues that caution is usually misapplied: active, early management of process, sequencing, and structure is distinct from substantive engagement and produces better evidence at lower cost, without compromising neutrality.
Category: Big-Picture Perspectives on Expert Witness Practice - Expert witness practice looks recognizably similar to a generation ago at its core. What's changing fast is everything around it: technology reshaping analysis and presentation, a slow push toward standardization, better-prepared tribunals, and a genuinely globalizing profession. This piece maps the direction of travel and what it means for practitioners now.
Category: Big-Picture Perspectives on Expert Witness Practice - A decision-maker's instinct to trust one expert report over another is not arbitrary. It comes down to five specific, buildable qualities: clarity, methodological transparency, independence as a visible signal, consistency under pressure, and calibrated confidence. This piece breaks down each one and why they only work together.
Category: Big-Picture Perspectives on Expert Witness Practice - The expert's fee note is the most visible cost of expert evidence and usually the smallest one. The real cost hides in counsel hours, hearing delay, and lost negotiating leverage, driven by three compounding patterns: late instruction, oversized reports, and last-minute tactics. This piece traces the mechanics and where the money actually goes.
