How to Verify an Expert's Credentials

Federal Workers Comp Lawyers - How to Verify an Expert's Credentials

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Experts, sad to say, are not all the time honest about their credentials, as any modern news items confirm. Knowing how to verify the background of an scholar - whether yours or your opponent's - could prove important to your case.

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Federal Workers Comp Lawyers

In perhaps the most dramatic modern 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 contemplate in two trials.

These cases clarify 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 contribute many tools for checking an expert's background, from public 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 collection of resources and tools that include potentially important 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 habitancy 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 anything there you might regret. Has he posted comments to others' blogs. Have others written about him, truly or negatively, on their own blogs?

The best tool for searching blogs is Google Blog Search. Like Google's Web search, it is allinclusive and up to date. You can sort results by date or relevance, and you can crusade blogs in multiple languages.

A close second for searching blogs is Clusty. Clusty is not a crusade motor - 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 structure - which it calls "clusters." With this unique approach, it provides results that are both allinclusive 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 person made to one of these, crusade Google Groups. It hosts a collection 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. perhaps the person you are researching said something pertinent in a podcast or was the branch of person else's podcast comment. any sites claim to crusade podcasts, but most of these truly crusade only the 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 originate 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 through any of a whole of networking Web sites. The most favorite at the moment 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 assess with what he has in case,granted to you? Also, look for references from others and contemplate his network of connections for any that might help whether verify or call into query his background.

Other firm networking sites include 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 firm 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 include a wealth of information. Corporate filings can contribute data on an individual's firm affiliations, employment arrangements, investments, and more. Even an individual's instruction and employment history can sometimes be tracked through Edgar.

If the scholar works in the securities industry, two databases worth checking are Nasd BrokerCheck which provides data on the professional backgrounds of current and previous 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 change 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 through the Internet Archive's Wayback motor 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 whole of major research systems sell way to public records. These include LexisNexis, Westlaw, ChoicePoint, and Accurint. But many public records are now available online for exiguous or no cost. A collection of Web sites help direct you to these online sources of public records.

One of the best is crusade Systems with links to nearly 40,000 sources of public records on the Web. It includes links to sources throughout the world, although the greatest whole 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: professional license registrations, corporate records, marriage notices, Ucc filings, deed registries, birth and death records, lobbyist listings, doctor disciplinary proceedings, and much more.

Other sites that contribute directories of public records and data include:

Virtual Gumshoe at virtualgumshoe.com: A good collection of Web resources for public records research. public 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 public records and public information. Black Book Online at blackbookonline.info: A free public records site targeted at secret investigators, skip tracers, government investigators and others. Good collection of links and descriptions. Brb Publications at brbpub.com: provides a fairly comprehensive, state-by-state list of free public records sites, as well as an index of national sites and someone else for Canada and U.S. Territories.
Social security Numbers

Due to privacy concerns, it is difficult to find public security numbers on the Web these days. But you can truly verify that a whole is valid and belongs to a living person. Enter a whole in The Ssn Validator at and it will tell you whether the whole 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 healing 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 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 assistance with much the same data that requires no inventory is Justia's Federal District Court Filings & Dockets. This free, searchable resource 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 selection for searching federal court dockets is Who's Suing Whom. A secret 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 payment to retrieve full-text court dockets.

Vital Records

Vital records - birth, death and marriage certificates and separation decrees - are increasingly available free online through state and local government sources. Vital Records data at vitalrec.com tells where to find them anywhere 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 exterior the U.S., the site lists links to foreign vital records sites. This uncomplicated site is designed with a nod towards genealogy, but it is one many lawyers are sure to find useful.

Expert contemplate Rulings

The Daubert Tracker is a Web site industrialized specifically to help lawyers track cases captivating the admissibility of scholar testimony and, in particular, find out how definite experts fared in the courts. Its central feature 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 collection of more than 10,000 briefs and other supporting documents from both appellate and trial courts relating to scholar contemplate testimony. If you find a document you are curious in, you can also view the first 10 percent of it free. If you resolve you want to buy the perfect document, the cost is for non-subscribers and .50 for subscribers.

Writings

In vetting an expert, it is foremost to confirm authorship of listed works as well as to crusade for any unlisted works that could be relevant or embarrassing. Two important 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 favorite resource for scholarly publications is the public Science research Network. This international collaborative is home to scholarly research exterior more than 400 branch 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 important source for researching an expert's published papers.

Another useful source is Isi HighlyCited.com This site provides profiles and bibliographic data for the most very cited researchers in 21 broad branch categories. For listed individuals, the site provides biographical data - including education, faculty and professional posts, memberships and offices, current research interests and personal Web sites - as well as a full listing of publications, including journal articles, books, and consulation proceedings.

Other Resources

The U.S. Government maintains any whole 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 companies 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 perfect your search. The free and low-cost resources described here contribute useful supplements to more expensive research services.

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