One of the key issues in any expert witness-client relationship is cost. Expert witness billing rates vary among disciplines, but the very word 'expert' implies scarcity and thus demand. With average expert witness billing rate being around 260-300 an hour, expert witness billing rates can be a stumbling block to getting a client to retain you.

However, there are some things expert witnesses can offer to mitigate the costs to the client, thus making the expert much more appealing, and more likely to get retained.

One answer is to be more than just a subject-matter expert to the client; be a cost-sensitive expert, offering solutions to clients to limit their expenditure.

There are three suggestions for keeping expert witness costs low: Efficiency of labor, limiting travel costs, and negotiating rates in exchange for longer term projects. If you can include these ideas into your pre-retention interview, you can show the potential client your commitment to their bottom line, and that you offer more than just being a 'subject matter' expert.  

Efficiency: With a little bit of forethought and planning with your client, you can ensure that you are only doing the things that really only you can do. Offer to assign the basic 'grunt work', such as document collection or background research to lower paid professionals, so that you are not billing your client 315.00 an hour to do a literature search and review that your assistant can do for 25.00 an hour, for example. Even if this only saves a few hours of billing for the client, they will appreciate that you are finding ways to contain their costs.

Scheduling and travel: Rather than flying/driving/etc several times to your client's office, arrange the work so that a minimum of in-person meetings can suffice. Teleconference calls are cheap, and video conferences and 'webex' type conversations are now incredibly easy to set up, which allows face-to-face meetings or shared computer screen presentations without paying for airplanes, taxis, or parking.

Discount your expert witness billing rate for 'big hour' cases. We see this more and more, where experts are offering a lower billing rate for cases that will bill a lot of hours. The logic here is that getting retained on a case that might bill 200 or more hours is worth a modest reduction in the expert witness billing rate. Recently, a high profile banking expert witness told me he had good success with a staggered expert witness billing rate: 350.00 an hour for the first 100 hours, 315.00 an hour for the next 50, and 275.00 for the hours billed after that.

By bringing these ideas up in a pre-hiring interview, you can show the client that you offer much more than any competitors.

If you have any questions or comments about the ideas offered in this article, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. We are standing by to assist you!