The Long Gameplan and The Short Gameplan

Deepening your professional reputation is a short-term and long-term goal; it isn’t only a matter of ‘years in the game.’

Would you rather hire a med-legal expert who’s testified 1000 times, or 3? Licensed 5 years, or 20?

You might assume that many years in practice and experience on the stand are the most important to being an effective and sought-after expert.

You might also believe a forensic practice can’t be built any faster than the accumulation of years in the field.

Of course, experience and long-acquired expertise are golden. Certainly, that’s your long game, but it isn’t the only game in town.

Your short-term plan can start now.

If you don’t have a lot of experience, let’s start with what you already know.

Everyone has strengths, and they sometimes outweigh a lack of experience.

Attorneys faced with your colleagues/competitors need to know the differences among experts and you can teach them.

A classic example is the academic expert witness.

Don’t be limited by a lack of training at a well-known Ivy League school, a professorship, and/or a stack of publications. Credentials like these do not mean such a person has skills crucial to an Expert Witness.

Explaining Your Strengths

An IME that provides robust forensic findings

You might be especially skilled at conducting an IME.

Perhaps you are good at drawing out information from an examinee, and interpreting complex cues, even malingering. This is the case of one of my clients and we ensure attorneys understand why this is important.

Compare this to a different scenario I have seen described in many a forensic report: the examinee finds a doctor cold, or does not trust the doctor to be impartial. The examiner who produces a thorough and insightful report can properly describe the nature and relevance of the uncooperative examinee.

The excellent report

A well-written report is sometimes a turning point in a case. Is this your strength? Even the “greenest” medicolegal expert can write a good report. Unfortunately, seasoned doctors with a great CV may have terrible writing skills. Who is the better choice for a case?

The expert who writes a thorough and readable report provides a valuable service. For example, most cases settle, and can do so on the strength of an Expert report. The report is disclosed during discovery and all parties can see how testimony is likely to play out before sitting down to the bargaining table.

Communication Skills: the Jury’s Experience

Speaking to a jury/testimony is not for everyone. You can learn, over time, to excel at testimony. If it comes naturally, attorneys will appreciate knowing a jury will respond to your testimony. Juries appreciate an Expert who is articulate but not condescending, trustworthy and believable, and confident of his or her findings.

Skills attorneys don’t understand

I find attorneys may need to be informed about the Expert’s particular strengths–the nature of the strength, its importance, and role in a case.

Most attorneys don’t actually understand the many roles and skills an expert witness/undisclosed forensic expert can contribute (objectively) to all parties in a case.

Compensating Factors

What you lack in years of experience can be balanced with your other strengths. When we tease out those compensating factors, the next step is making a communication strategy. Here’s a short list, followed by a more detailed discussion.

Define and communicate your most unique areas of expertise.

Specialty Knowledge

• • Knowledgeable about the use of specific medications and efficacy in treatment? You may be qualified to testify about malpractice in the use of that medication.
  • Expert about dependency on alcohol, pain medication, or opioids? Attorneys may need to know about you if this experience applies to assessing DUI defendants or medical malpractice cases where addictive medication wasn’t monitored appropriately.
  • Clinical physician? Opine about disorders that do or don’t respond well to singular standalone treatments. A psychiatrist, for example, can opine about psychotherapy absent medication, or vice versa. Pain experts consider the riskiness of non-medication treatments for pain vs. “managing pain” where treatment like surgery is too dangerous.

What are you qualified to opine about?

Depth of knowledge can balance the greater years of experience of a colleague.

Communication Tools

• • CV. Prepare a CV that conveys that to your clients. Have your CV reviewed by another set of eyes, skilled with both successful and unsuccessful CVs of forensic experts in your field. Part of your gameplan is a CV that outperforms, or equally performs, that of your colleagues. Hint: take a look at the first line of your CV–is it the most important thing to know? Assume no one makes it to page 3 of your CV. What’s their takeaway?
    
  • Bios. Expert bios are required all over the internet. Attorneys don’t always have time to track down and read a CV. A few paragraphs that capture your professional qualifications and strengths is a short and sweet tool.

Research

• Know your competitors.
  • Assess the strengths and weaknesses of your forensic colleagues, and compare them to your own.
  • This information drives a strategy to be what others are not. People are rarely objective or accurate in their self-perception. This can be true of you, or others in your field. As an experienced “second set of eyes,” I have found this to be true and know a reality check is helpful to successful marketing.

Functional practice tools that communicate customer support.

• • I feel strongly about this. Over and over, I find financial advantages to everyone, attorney-client, and expert alike. Every interaction between you communicates how well you know your business, or don’t, and whether working with you is going to be easy or a hassle. This, by the way, extends to anyone representing you to the work: your staff, answering service, website developer, billing service. In the long game plan, you build a reputation for consistency and fairness in something as simple as how you approach collections, for example.

•  Information is power.
• Everything you do to build your practice is only as strong as your ability to determine what is working. That’s why data-mining is a marketing term (Check out the Glossary for more about “data-mining.”.)

  We use information feedback to reorient how clients find you, learn and reinforce what we find captures their attention. A well-written article on your website, for instance, helps underline your reputation for producing a well-written report.

•  Capitalizing on someone else’s “misses:” a scenario.
• Let’s imagine attorneys find Expert “Smith” online. It appears Expert Smith has been a practicing forensic psychologist for 20 years and has testified hundreds of times. Expert Smith’s website and a testimonial or two praise him for thoroughness and sound reasoning. In the absence of anything to the contrary, attorneys assume “thoroughness” means Expert Smith can be counted on to read the records closely and find what is relevant, however well-buried. Also in the absence of anything to the contrary, attorneys assume Expert Smith is persuasive and at ease on the stand as a result of all that time spent there (100 times!). Expert Smith is clearly at the top of his profession, attorneys think. Yet his bedside manner leaves something to be desired. His report is full of awkwardly worded, contradictory statements, or simply confusing conclusions. Dates don’t line up and the word “Draft” is embedded in the final report. Look hard enough and you might find that well-founded opinion.  This goes far deeper than copy-editing.
• The nature of competition is to be different. Big numbers or flashy credentials do not define the playing field. Understand and master this, and you have tools to overcome what you may perceive as weaknesses standing in your way.