How to Verify an Expert's Credentials
Experts, sad to say, are not all the time honest about their credentials, as any new news items confirm. Knowing how to verify the background of an scholar - whether yours or your opponent's - could prove valuable to your case.
How to Verify an Expert's Credentials
In maybe the most dramatic new example, a New Orleans federal judge threw out a jury verdict in favor of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. After a cardiologist who testified for the defense in a Vioxx trial was found to have misrepresented his credentials.
A few weeks earlier in California, a man who fraudulently passed himself off as a computer forensics scholar in two cases pleaded guilty to federal perjury charges. In Toronto, a psychiatrist had his license suspended after lying about his credentials while serving as an scholar inspect in two trials.
These cases construe why it is crucial for trial lawyers to confirm that an scholar is all he claims to be. Vetting an expert's credentials should be a key step in your trial preparation.
Major legal research services furnish many tools for checking an expert's background, from communal records databases to deposition banks. But these major services can be expensive to use and still leave bases uncovered.
At the same time, the Web harbors a range of resources and tools that comprise potentially valuable data but that many lawyers overlook in researching an expert's background.
Yes, we all now know to check Google, but this record looks at some of the lesser-known - and mostly free - research tools you may be bypassing. Of course, these Web tools are neither foolproof nor exhaustive. No Web site can substitute for using a reputable expert-search service.
Blogs: Words Can Haunt You
The old adage, "What you say may come back to haunt you," has never been more true. With millions of population posting to blogs and participating in Internet consulation groups, we are creating permanent records of our words and thoughts - like it or not.
In light of this, the blogosphere should be among your first stops in researching an expert's background. Does the scholar declare a blog? If so, has he said anyone there you might regret. Has he posted comments to others' blogs. Have others written about him, actually or negatively, on their own blogs?
The best tool for searching blogs is Google Blog Search. Like Google's Web search, it is widespread and up to date. You can sort results by date or relevance, and you can crusade blogs in many languages.
A close second for searching blogs is Clusty. Clusty is not a crusade engine - it does not crawl or index the Web. Rather, it is a metasearch tool that calls on other blog crusade engines, extracts the relevant information, and then organizes the results into a hierarchical folder buildings - which it calls "clusters." With this unique approach, it provides results that are both widespread and usefully organized.
Another source of potentially damaging comments by or about an scholar is the Internet's many news groups and consulation lists. To find postings man made to one of these, crusade Google Groups. It hosts a range of current groups as well as an archive of more than 750 million Usenet postings dating back to 1985.
As podcasts come to be more popular, they also should be included in a background search. maybe the man you are researching said something pertinent in a podcast or was the subject of man else's podcast comment. any sites claim to crusade podcasts, but most of these actually crusade only the together with text - the title, description, author and any metadata - but not the audio file.
A handful of tools now enable you to crusade the full spoken text of podcasts. One of the best is Podzinger. It is based on speech-recognition technology industrialized for U.S. Intelligence to monitor foreign television and radio broadcasts. It uses this technology to create a textual index of the audio data in any Mp3 or Wav file, converting the spoken words into searchable text.
Networking Sites
Where professionals once networked at cocktail parties and civic events, today you are more likely to find them connecting straight through any of a amount of networking Web sites. The most beloved at the occasion is LinkedIn where members post data about their careers and their connections and share mutual recommendations. If your scholar is listed on LinkedIn, read his profile carefully. How does his listing correlate with what he has provided to you? Also, look for references from others and inspect his network of connections for any that might help whether verify or call into demand his background.
Other business networking sites comprise Ziggs, Ryze, and Orkut. Of course, be sure also to check personal networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
Corporate Records
Anyone researching a publicly traded business would know to check the U.S. Securities and transfer Commission's Edgar database. But fewer think to crusade Edgar for data about individuals, even though it may comprise a wealth of information. Corporate filings can furnish data on an individual's business affiliations, employment arrangements, investments, and more. Even an individual's education and employment history can sometimes be tracked straight through Edgar.
If the scholar works in the securities industry, two databases worth checking are Nasd BrokerCheck which provides data on the pro backgrounds of current and former Nasd-registered securities firms and brokers, and the National Futures Association's Background Affiliation Status data town (Basic) which does much the same for registered futures dealers.
Historical Web
Web sites turn over time. If your scholar has a Web site, what it says today may differ from what it said five years ago. The best way to track historical changes in someone's Web site is straight through the Internet Archive's Wayback engine at archive.org. Here, you can find an archive that captures historical snapshots of sites. While not exhaustive, it is likely to have at least some pages showing earlier versions of a site.
Public Records
Any amount of major research systems sell access to communal records. These comprise LexisNexis, Westlaw, ChoicePoint, and Accurint. But many communal records are now available online for minute or no cost. A range of Web sites help direct you to these online sources of communal records.
One of the best is crusade Systems with links to nearly 40,000 sources of communal records on the Web. It includes links to sources throughout the world, although the greatest amount of sources are in the U.S. And Canada. Not all sites listed are free, but the site clearly marks those that are not. Among the listings: pro license registrations, corporate records, marriage notices, Ucc filings, deed registries, birth and death records, lobbyist listings, physician disciplinary proceedings, and much more.
Other sites that furnish directories of communal records and data include:
Virtual Gumshoe at virtualgumshoe.com: A good range of Web resources for communal records research.
communal Records Online Directory at http://publicrecords.netronline.com [http://publicrecords.netronline.com:]: Links to state and municipal sites, with an emphasis on real estate, tax and vital records sources.
Merlin data Sources at merlindata.com/industrylinks.html: Links to resources for looking communal records and communal information.
Black Book Online at blackbookonline.info: A free communal records site targeted at hidden investigators, skip tracers, government investigators and others. Good range of links and descriptions.
Brb Publications at brbpub.com: provides a fairly comprehensive, state-by-state list of free communal records sites, as well as an index of national sites and an additional one for Canada and U.S. Territories.
Social safety Numbers
Due to privacy concerns, it is difficult to find communal safety numbers on the Web these days. But you can actually verify that a amount is valid and belongs to a living person. Enter a amount in The Ssn Validator at and it will tell you whether the amount has been issued, in which state it was issued, when it was issued, and whether any death claims exist against the number. It will not tell you the identity of the owner of the number.
Professional Credentials
To check a curative doctor's license, DocFinder provides a database of license data for participating states. For states not included in the DocFinder database, the site provides links to their own license look-up sites.
Most states now have sites for verifying a lawyer's bar admission. You can find these straight through the state government Web site. A new site, Avvo rates lawyers based on publicly available data and compiles client reviews and disciplinary sanctions.
Dockets
Is your scholar a party to pending litigation? To find out in federal court, check the U.S. Party/Case Index. This is a national index of parties and cases for U.S. District, bankruptcy and appellate courts. It is updated nightly. Use of it requires a Pacer account. Not all federal courts participate, but the site includes a list of those that do not.
A service with much the same data that requires no inventory is Justia's Federal District Court Filings & Dockets. This free, searchable reserved supply contains data on recently filed U.S. District court civil cases. The database includes cases filed since Jan. 1, 2006 and can be searched by party name, court, and type of case.
Another low-cost option for searching federal court dockets is Who's Suing Whom. A hidden translation and interpretation services firm offers this tool for searching patent, trademark or copyright cases pending in federal courts. crusade by case type and party name, court, state or date to find basic case information. There is a fee to retrieve full-text court dockets.
Vital Records
Vital records - birth, death and marriage certificates and divorce decrees - are increasingly available free online straight through state and local government sources. Vital Records data at vitalrec.com tells where to find them in any place in the U.S. It lists sources for each state, territory and county, and most cities and towns, along with contact, fee and ordering information. For records face the U.S., the site lists links to foreign vital records sites. This straightforward site is designed with a nod towards genealogy, but it is one many lawyers are sure to find useful.
Expert inspect Rulings
The Daubert Tracker is a Web site industrialized specifically to help lawyers track cases spicy the admissibility of scholar testimony and, in particular, find out how definite experts fared in the courts. Its central highlight is a database of all reported cases under Daubert and its progeny, trial and appellate, backed up when available by full-text briefs, transcripts and docket entries. Part of what makes the site unique is that it links cases to experts. Even if the scholar is not named in the court decision, the site's editors track down the expert's identity.
A year subscription is 5 or you can buy a two-hour session for or a half-hour for . For free, you can crusade the site's range of more than 10,000 briefs and other supporting documents from both appellate and trial courts relating to scholar inspect testimony. If you find a document you are interested in, you can also view the first 10 percent of it free. If you determine you want to buy the unblemished document, the cost is for non-subscribers and .50 for subscribers.
Writings
In vetting an expert, it is leading to confirm authorship of listed works as well as to crusade for any unlisted works that could be relevant or embarrassing. Two valuable resources to check for published works are the Library of Congress Online Catalog at and the records of the U.S. Copyright Office. Of course, it also makes sense to check Amazon.com.
An increasingly beloved reserved supply for scholarly publications is the communal Science research Network. This international collaborative is home to scholarly research face more than 400 subject areas. It contains abstracts of more than 150,000 working papers and the full text of well over 100,000 published papers. This makes Ssrn an valuable source for researching an expert's published papers.
Another beneficial source is Isi HighlyCited.com This site provides profiles and bibliographic data for the most very cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories. For listed individuals, the site provides biographical data - together with education, faculty and pro posts, memberships and offices, current research interests and personal Web sites - as well as a full listing of publications, together with journal articles, books, and consulation proceedings.
Other Resources
The U.S. Government maintains any amount of databases that could be relevant to vetting an expert, depending on his field of expertise. One often worth checking is the Excluded Parties List System. It provides data on individuals and clubs that are excluded from receiving federal contracts and federal financial assistance.
When it comes to checking someone's background, more is better. The more sources you use, the more unblemished your search. The free and low-cost resources described here furnish beneficial supplements to more expensive research services.
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