Entire Issue - National Association of Legal Assistants

Experts on the Internet
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search only by last name or by last name and first initial (in
medical citation, the author’s first name is not used).
Sometimes you just need a brief introduction to a subject
area and an encyclopedia or dictionary will serve nicely. Check
out Refdesk.com for links to medical and drug dictionaries,
technology encyclopedias, the American Heritage Encyclopedia
and more (http://www.refdesk.com). There is even an “Ask an
Expert” section.
Association Sites & Directories
When an expert in an uncommon field is needed, or a
starting place for the search is elusive, consulting a database of
associations may be helpful. Some public libraries provide
remote access to one of the largest of these association directories,
The Encyclopedia of Associations. The Los Angeles Public
Library, for example, makes this directory accessible to anyone
with a LAPL card (www.lapl.org) and an Internet connection.
Using this encyclopedia can lead to associations that specialize
in almost every field. There are associations for professions
and interest groups ranging from “chewing gum” to
“bananas.” If the association has a URL listed, scour the site
for a list of research links to learn more about the topic.
Also make note of the association’s executive director’s
name or any officers’ names. Typically, e-mail addresses or links
to them will be included. Then contact the director or one of
the officers for a referral to an expert. Or, simply use the contact
information in the The Encyclopedia of Associations listing
to call the association directly and ask for a referral.
Bar Association Databases
To find experts, consider turning to the local bar
association’s Web site to see if they have created an expert
witness directory. In Los Angeles, for instance, there is the
Los Angeles County Bar Association’s online expert database,
Expert4law (www.expert4law.org). Experts register themselves
on this site for $300.
This site also has an excellent overview on the effective use
of an expert. The site includes six separate databases to assist in
locating 1) experts and consultants, 2) a lawyer-to-lawyer consultants
network, 3) legal support services, 4) alternative dispute
resolution experts, 5) research and publishing experts,
and, 6) law office technology experts.
Expert4law offers focused searches, including key-word, location,
and a combination of the two. It also supports Boolean operators
(“and,” “or,” “not”) to make the search more precise. The
results offer full contact information, with a link to the expert’s
Web site and a list of the expert’s specialties, degrees, and licenses.
The San Francisco Bar Association (http://www.sfbar.org/-
cgi/experts/exp.cgi) also has an online directory of expert witnesses.
There are also commercial expert witness directories.
Commercial Databases
Law.com (http://experts.law.com/) has a free expert database,
but experts who wish to list themselves pay $495 per year for
a national listing and $295 per year for a single state listing.
Searching by an area of expertise leads to a list of national experts
along with a menu that allows searching by specific states.
Experts.com allows browsing by topic or doing a database
search using one or a combination of criteria such as key
words, category, name, company, and address. You can limit
each of the criteria to “all words” or “contains” or “is exactly”
or “sounds like.” The experts’ listing offers brief biographies
and links to their Web sites and e-mail.
Many of the large legal portals such as Findlaw
(www.Findlaw.com) and Hieros Gamos (www.hg.org) also have
online directories with short biographies and links to the
experts’ Web sites.
Sites with Audio & Video
As Beckwith noted in his book, people (especially jurors)
often judge others by their demeanor, their body language,
their voice, and their physical attributes. On the JurisPro Web
site (www.JurisPro.com), visitors can see a photo of the expert,
and hear the expert speak through streaming audio. This allows
some insight into how that expert presents himself or herself.
Some experts have even included streaming video of themselves
on their Web sites to enable attorneys to see them in action.
This is extremely valuable in evaluating their abilities to speak
on their area of expertise.
Referral Sites
Expert witness referral companies are similar to the expert witness
directories in that they maintain a database of professionals who
are available for expert witness assignments. The difference is that an
additional fee must be paid to the referral company to retain that
expert. The benefit of these services is the large size of their database
and the time saved looking for experts who do consult and testify.
The downside is that the user has to contact the referral company to
get the expert’s name—and pay the added fee.
One of the best known of expert witness referral companies
is TASA (http://www.tasanet.com), a site with 8,000 areas
of expertise represented. Only the number of experts in the
selected field and their geographic locations are listed. Users
then must call or e-mail TASA for the experts’ names and contact
information. This is how TASA monitors usage in order to
add its flat fee to an expert’s hourly rate.
For referrals to medical experts, go to MedQuest
(www.medquestltd.com). This site provides referrals to testifying
medical experts (MD, DDS, DMD, DC, DO, DPM, OD,
OTR, PharmD, PhD, RN and RPT) in every region of the
country. These experts provide evaluations for plaintiff or
defense counsel in all types of healthcare related malpractice,
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FACTS & FINDINGS / AUGUST 2003