Practice Tip: Expert Witness Selection

Experts were once generally protected from discovery. Today, however, with ever-increasing reliance on expert witness testimony, discovery has become a high-stakes endeavor. While the Daubert pre-requisites for admissibility counsel in favor of retaining the foremost expert on a particular issue ' an individual who has made the issue his or her life work ' practical considerations as to expert witness discovery may counsel otherwise. As with parties to litigation, experts are generally annoyed by invasive discovery requests. Experts, however, have a far more limited interest in a case than the parties. If discovery requests threaten professional reputation, or even just become irritating or burdensome, an expert may choose the path of least resistance, abandoning the case, and leaving both counsel and client in the lurch.