Ever wondered what happens when economics meets the courtroom? Dr. Philip Cross pulls back the curtain on the fascinating world of economic expert witnessing with refreshing candor and practical wisdom.

After earning his PhD from the University of Wisconsin and teaching at Georgetown University, Dr. Cross transitioned through major consulting firms before founding his own successful practice. His journey reveals a counterintuitive truth: authenticity trumps polish in the expert witness business. “I’ve kind of unlearned over the years to try to be slick and professional,” he explains. “I’m just myself.”

The conversation explores the delicate balancing act economic experts must perform – applying economic expertise across diverse industries without overstepping boundaries, managing different attorney styles from micromanagers to completely hands-off, and navigating the stark differences between plaintiff and defense work. Dr. Cross maintains a deliberate mix of both to protect his credibility.

Perhaps most illuminating is Dr. Cross’s perspective on what makes attorney-expert relationships work: clear communication, appropriate boundaries between experts and end clients, and mutual respect for each other’s expertise. Whether you’re a practicing attorney, aspiring expert witness, or simply curious about how economic analysis shapes legal outcomes, this conversation offers an unvarnished look at a profession few truly understand.

 

Note:   Transcript has been lightly edited for clarity 

Host: Noah Bolmer, Round Table Group

Guest: Dr. Philip Cross, Founder of Kenyon Consulting, LLC

Noah Bolmer: Welcome to Engaging Experts. I’m your host, Noah Bolmer, and I’m excited to welcome Doctor Phillip Cross to the show. Doctor Cross is the founder of Kenyon Consulting, LLC, an economic and statistical consulting firm. He has over 20 years of experience as an economist and statistician in academia, government, and consulting. Dr. Cross holds a PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Cross, thank you for joining me today on Engaging Experts. 

Dr. Philip Cross: It’s my pleasure, Noah. Thank you. 

Noah Bolmer: You’re a PhD economist with a background ranging from academia to consulting. How did you first become involved in expert witnessing?

Dr. Philip Cross: When I finished my PhD, I went into academia. I taught in the economics department of Georgetown University for a few years. Then I left academia and entered consulting. When I first entered the consulting world, I was working—I was living in Washington, D.C, because I had been working at Georgetown. There are many big consulting shops on K Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown D.C., and I worked at one or two of those for the next few years, including Deloitte. There’s a mob called Berkeley Research Group, and another mob called Alex Partners. After doing that for a few years and being an expert witness for a while, I decided to start my own business five years ago. It’s going gangbusters, and it was the right call to make.

Noah Bolmer: Tell me about your first call. An engaging attorney calls you out of the blue and says, “We need an expert in your field.” What’s that first call like? What are the questions that you’re asked, and now that you’ve been doing this for a while, what are the things that newer expert witnesses should know and should also be asking? It is a two-way vetting process. They’re vetting you as an expert, but you’re also vetting them. Is this an engagement I want to take?

Dr. Philip Cross: That’s an excellent question, Noah. My style may or may not be relevant to new experts. Earlier in my career, I got a lot of advice that I tried to follow, which was you’ve got a very—you’ve got to be very slick. You’ve got to be professional. You’ve got to tell the potential client what they want to hear. Following that advice didn’t get me anywhere. I’m not—I’m a take me [as] you see me sort of person, and if I’m not behaving like that, I feel that I don’t come across as the best version of myself. These days, I ignore all that advice. When a potential client reaches out to me, I’m frank with them. I have experience in many different areas. Sometimes, I have the potential to be engaged on a matter that I have a ton of experience in, and then I’ll say, “I’ve got a lot of experience doing this [type] of damage analysis.” Then, I’ll explain it.

On other occasions, I’ll be chasing a lead where I don’t have tons of experience, so it’s a case like that where I don’t have specific experience, but there’s no economic expert out there that has specific experience. I can throw my hat in the ring along with everybody else, and we can see how I go. Over the years, I’ve unlearned to be slick, professional, or whatever. I’m just myself. It’s not that I’m completely unprofessional when I’m being myself, but I don’t put on any bells and whistles to impress people.

I can tell you one or two interesting stories about some gigs I’ve had. I was curious as to how I got them. A few years ago, I got a plaintiff-side matter working with plaintiffs on a class action in Alabama. Then, the next year, or two years ago, I got another one. This one was working on the defense side of the litigation in Mississippi. At that point, I’m like, I don’t think about getting a ton of business from the Deep South. I thought this was curious. I ended up with one gig in Alabama and another gig in Mississippi. I was talking to a friend of mine, and they said, “Phil, I think I know what it is. [Many] of these southern lawyers, especially lawyers from the Deep South, are looking for an economic expert.” Most of the economic experts—they go, there’s like—a lot of them are going to be [like] me. They’re going to be white guys with PhDs, and they’re going to be in the Mid-Atlantic or the Northeast like me. The way that I’m different is that these guys are all going to talk like Yankees. I don’t sound like I’m from the South, but I don’t think I sound like I’m a Yankee at all. My friend has a theory that maybe that’s where I got those gigs, and who knows, maybe that’s true.

There are other wrinkles that I can go with. I moved from Australia to the United States [for] graduate school, and I lived in Madison, Wisconsin, for five years while I got my PhD at the University of Wisconsin. I occasionally get leads for something in the State of Wisconsin, so I’m always going to put my hand up and say, “I spent five years living in Madison.” If I end up testifying in front of the jury in Milwaukee or whatever, I will speak with an Australian accent, but I will have that local connection that I can draw on.

Noah Bolmer: Of the things you mentioned that was interesting to me is you get engaged for some hyper specific niches. There may in fact be no economist that is an expert in the very particular thing that they’re looking for. How do you go about disclosing to the client that, “I have the skill set for this. I haven’t— I’m not necessarily an expert in it because nobody is, so there might be some research.” How does a conversation like that go?

Dr. Philip Cross: That’s an interesting question and before I answer it, I will confirm the premise of your question. It’s a good one because I work with some expert search firms like the Round Table Group. There are some others I work with well and these expert search firms sometimes reach out to me and they have the most ridiculous requests for the sort of expert they’re looking for. We want an economist- we want an economic expert who has a PhD in economics and who’s steeped in the solar panel industry in the northern part of the State of Arizona. Good luck finding that person. Sometimes, I get requests that come in like that. To answer your question, it’s important for me when I’m retained to work on a litigation matter and 98% of my work is litigation expert witness work, as an economic expert, it’s important that the parameters are set. People know that you’re opining as an economic expert and you’re not opining about anything else. For example, I’m working on some arbitrations at the moment that involve the video game industry, and I’ve had to develop some knowledge of how that industry works to be able to work on these matters, but I’m not expected to become an expert in the video game industry. [To learn about the video game industry] I Googled and talked to my 12-year-old son who is a gamer and I’m not. That’s the only way I’ve learned about the parameters of the industry. In this particular matter that I’m talking about with the video game industry, the lawyer I’m working with is good in that he realizes that I’m not expected to be an expert in the video gaming industry. I’m expected to be an economic expert. That’s something that’s good to set out from the outset. I’m not an industry expert in whatever the industry is. I’m opining as an economic expert.

Another pitfall that you don’t want to fall into when you’re a young expert is if you’re giving deposition testimony, or writing an expert report, do not offer a legal opinion unless you are in fact a lawyer. I’m not and most economic experts have PhD’s in economics, but they’re not lawyers. I have to be careful that I’m not offering anything that can be interpreted as a legal opinion because again, I’m going to be opining about an area outside of my expertise, which is a big no-no. I’m cognizant not to do that. I work on matters in a ton of different industries and I’m not an industry expert in any of them, but I’ve been doing this for a while. I’ve been an economic expert for 15 years and so you occasionally get a lead for a matter where there’s some similarity to some matter you worked on earlier. You just have to tell the potential client about your experience there as well.

Noah Bolmer: Is there a tacit understanding that you have to do some preliminary foundational research to be able to apply your opinion to these potentially unfamiliar areas, such as, video games? You have to learn a bit about something that you can apply your economic expertise to it. Is that a billable occurrence? How does how does all of that work?

Dr. Philip Cross: Yes, it is a billable occurrence, although [many] of my clients are price sensitive. They’re interested in the pricing with a view to keeping the bill down. By the way, I’ve been running my own firm, Kenya Consulting, for five years, and this is a little niche I was not going to have before then because I was working for these big downtown D.C. economic consulting shops who are not at all flexible on their billing. They bill at top dollar and that’s fine. That’s their business model. Now that I’m out on my own, I’m chasing after a different market than those guys typically capture. Everything I can anticipate doing, I’ll tell the client, “That’s going to be billable.” Doing research into a particular industry that I’m working on is going to be billable. It’s normally doesn’t take too long. I use whatever resources I have available. I mentioned before, my 12-year-old son is a good resource sometimes. I have a fantastic junior staff that work for me on a contract rate basis. They are smart guys. There’s one’s in grad school. One is an undergrad. These guy are twenty-two and I’m in my fifties. They know about certain parts of the U.S. economy that I don’t know about. Again, I draw wherever I can— getting help to get on top of stuff like that. To answer your question, yes, to the extent that I anticipate, I’m going to need to do research like this, I do bill for it, but I’m always trying to be upfront with clients [about] what I anticipate is going to be involved on a particular project and what I anticipate the billing is going to be.

Noah Bolmer: Since we’ve ventured into billing, let’s talk for a moment about how you structure your billing. Do you have a non-refundable retainer? Do you have different billing rates depending on what you’re doing? Is it one simple billing rate? Tell me a little about the anatomy of your billing.

Dr. Philip Cross: Sure. I don’t charge a retainer and that has come back to bite me on two occasions. I’ve been running my own business for five years and I’ve been stiffed twice. Once for $5,000 and once for $9,000. Both of those situations when they occurred were annoying but it’s the price of doing business. I’ll take it. It’s unrealistic to expect that’s going to happen 0% of the time. It has happened twice for me. I can live with it and my response to that is to not insist upon a retainer. I try to make sure clients are legit and avoid getting involved with someone who is likely to do something like that. I don’t charge retainer.

As to my billing rates, I have a tiered system. I have a billing rate that I quote for defense work and I have a bill rate that I quote for plaintiff work. My defense bill rate is higher because clients on the defense side tend to have deeper pockets. Again, let’s think back to when I worked for those big downtown economic consulting shops in on K Street or Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C. Ninety-five percent of their work was with defense side work because they’ve got these defendants with deep pockets who can pay the high rates those guys charge. Back in those days, I was doing a lot more defense work. These days I do not do zero defense work; I do a mix of defense and plaintiff. Maybe it’s 25% defense and 75% plaintiff. That’s part of how it works out for me these days and I like having a mix of plaintiff and defense work, because if I just did purely plaintiff work—there are some economic experts out there who only do plaintiff work, and I don’t want to be one of those people because it [enables] my integrity and reliability as an expert able to be challenged when I’m testifying. It’s like, “You’re a hired gun for the plaintiffs” I [say,] “No, I do this type of work for the defense as well.” I can point you to situations where I’ve used the same sort of analysis on the defense side of a particular type of case. Another time when I did the same thing on the plaintiff side of a particular case. That protects me from those attacks on my integrity. That was an aside, but back to my bill structure, I have a higher bill rate that I quote for defense work and I have a lower one that I quote for plaintiff work.

On top of those two rates that I quote, they’re—I use a term from the hotel industry, they’re my rack rates. That’s the starting point. If I think a matter is interesting to work on and I’d like to get the rate I’ll say, “My standard rate is X. but this sounds like an interesting case and if my standard rate causes you guys to balk about hiring me, we can talk about me being flexible on the rate.” I do that. I discount off my standard rates more often than I charge my standard rate. That’s another part of the flexibility that I have from running my own one-man shop. It’s great and it’s a mix of things. If it’s going to be a big gig. If it’s particularly interesting. If it’s a small gig, but it’s the sort of thing where it could lead to further work down the line with this same client or the same law firm, I think about all these things. I don’t have this set formula in my head. It’s more of a subconscious thing. I’ll be okay with giving these guys a bit of a discount if I think that’s what it needs for me to be retained to work on this particular matter.

Noah Bolmer: Are there any travel considerations? Do you charge a different travel rate?

Dr. Philip Cross: I don’t charge for travel time. For example, I flew out to Las Vegas to testify in a trial last month. It’s now August. That was in July, so that was last month. I flew out to Vegas to testify on a trial. I don’t charge for the flight. I’m in the D.C. area. I don’t charge for the flight out there for my time—for the flight out and the flight back. Obviously, I am reimbursed for my travel expenses, but I don’t charge for travel time. Typically, if I’m flying to Las Vegas to testify on a trial, I’m going to spend at least part of my flight, like reviewing and preparing for my testimony. That’s billable work. I’m prepping to give testimony.

Noah Bolmer: You were talking about working for the plaintiff versus working for the defendant, besides rates. are there any other fundamental differences as an expert witness working for a plaintiff or working for a defendant in terms of report writing, preparation, anything else?

Dr. Philip Cross: [Many] of the reports that I do involve a damage analysis and they are [differences] between the plaintiff side and the defense side. On the plaintiff side, you’re typically writing what’s called an affirmative report. The ball is being kicked off to you. You’re the first person to possess the ball to use a sports analogy. If there are damages at issue on the plaintiff side, you write what’s called an affirmative report and you say, “I’ve done this economic analysis and the plaintiff or plaintiffs in this particular matter have been damaged by X dollars.” When you’re retained on the defense side, you come in as the economic expert and you’re typically not doing anything affirmative because the plaintiff’s economic experts report is already out there. It’s your job to rebut that report so you’re not coming up with your own number. You’re looking at the number that the other side came up with and you’re looking for credible, reliable reasons to call into question the analysis that they used. That’s a good question. For an economic expert, the plaintiff and defense side’s work can be quite different.

Noah Bolmer: In structuring those rebuttal reports, is it a line-by-line situation or writing a separate report whole cloth that addresses the points that are in the affirmative report?

Dr. Philip Cross: You write a separate report. For example, I could write a rebuttal report to an affirmative plaintiff side report that was fifty pages, and my rebuttal could be eighty pages. It could even be more involved, but even if it is an eighty-page report, every part of the report is rebutting a particular part of the affirmative report produced by the plaintiffs. I’m trying to think if I’ve ever worked on a defense side case where the defense asked me to ignore what the plaintiffs did and just come up with my own economic analysis? I don’t think I’ve ever done that. I’m blanking. I suppose there are certain situations where that might happen.

The other thing is the type of jurisdiction you are working in can affect things as well. I work a lot in federal court and I also work a lot in state courts in various states around the United States. I’ve worked in other venues as well. I’ve worked for the Human Rights Commission of Alberta, Canada, for example. I’ve had one there. I’ve had gigs in Australia. They work a little differently than they do here. Australia has this interesting thing, and I’ve never worked on a case like this in Australia, but as an economic expert I would love to. Australia has this interesting wrinkle that they sometimes adopt that’s called hot tubing. It’s not as sexy as it sounds but it is quite interesting. It’s where you have some sort of a trial or some sort of a hearing where the economic experts for both sides turn up at the same time, they talk back and forth, and the judge or whoever the person is presiding over the hearing questions both people. [They] both present [their] testimony at the same time according to what the judge is interested or not interested in hearing about. I’ve never been involved in a hot tubing case, but that would be- that would be fun. That’s kind of—it’s an interesting way to do things and it’s going to involve thinking [about] things a little differently than how I normally do it.

Noah Bolmer: Fascinatingly, they’re starting to use hot tubing in the United States in certain limited circumstances. It’s becoming a thing. I wrote an article on the topic a couple of months ago. Interesting stuff. Besides that, when you’re working in a new venue, what is the preparation like? Do you have to know anything about the laws? Does your attorney have to prep you? This is the first time we’re going into this state and there are some things you have to know about presenting your case here, writing your report here, or being prepared for this particular venue? What’s it like working in a new venue?

Dr. Philip Cross: I work in new venues all the time. I’m based in the D.C. area, so I do [cases] in District of Columbia Superior Court, the Eastern District of Virginia, and other places close to D.C. There are some that I’m in again and again but then but there [are] plenty of others where I’m one and done. There are rules in different jurisdictions. I can tell you one that comes up all the time, prejudgment interest. If I’m writing an affirmative report where I’m saying some plaintiff has been damaged because of something that happened to them three years ago or whatever, jurisdictions let you add prejudgment interest. If I could say this person has been damaged by a half million dollars because of how they were treated three years ago. Then we add prejudgment interest to that to get up to where you are today and different jurisdictions have different amounts of prejudgment interest. Some jurisdictions, I’ve never worked on one of these, but some jurisdictions basically don’t allow prejudgment interest considerations at all, so that’s a possibility. [Many] jurisdictions have a standard six percent per year, per adjustment interest. That’s a common one. In some jurisdictions, it depends on the type of law that’s being challenged in the particular litigation. It could be 6% for this sort of challenge conduct and it could be 10% for some other sort of challenge conduct. Then there are other jurisdictions that say the prejudgment interest should be based on actual interest rates like the actual prime rate as published by the U.S. Treasury. That’s an example you need to get on top of how the rules work. Especially for an economic expert, prejudgment interest is a big thing. You have to get on top of how the rules work in different jurisdictions, make sure you’re doing the prejudgment interest calculation correctly.

Another part of your question was do lawyers guide you along and, in my experience, the answer is absolutely not. Normally, it’s me telling the lawyers that they have to go and figure out what the prejudgment interest rule is in a particular jurisdiction. Then, come back and tell me what it is because lawyers I work with, and I work with some smart ones and some good ones, but this is just something that I don’t think about. Their base way of thinking is I’m retaining an economic expert who is going to go away and do everything. That’s not how it works. I’m going to have to say, “Hang on a minute. You have to help me figure [some things] out and one of those things is this prejudgment interest issue.”

Noah Bolmer: Shifting gears a bit, let’s talk about preparation. How do you get ready for the big day, whether it’s a deposition or if it’s going to be some cross examination? Something’s is going to happen in court. You have to prepare for it. How do you like to get ready?

Dr. Philip Cross: That’s a good question. Again, let me talk about lawyers. I’ve worked with a lot of lawyers who I like. There is a small minority of the lawyers I’ve worked with, I haven’t liked, but most of them, I like. I’ve worked with lawyers that I like, who have a completely different approach. Some of them are very hands on, want to hold my hand, and walk me through every step of the process leading up to testifying in a deposition, for example. I’ve also worked with lawyers who, I hear from 5 minutes before the deposition is supposed to start even though I’ve sent them four emails the previous three weeks about, “Are you okay with me doing this and that?” Different lawyers take a different approach. These lawyers want to take the completely hands off approach. I’m okay with that because I feel I can guide myself in a way that’s going to best serve the clients. It’s client specific. It’s lawyer specific and I can give you a third example of the type of lawyer that I work with. One lawyer I worked with for the first time was very hands-on and that case went well. He was happy with my testimony, my expert report, and he was happy with me. He retained me again and I worked with him a second time and he was completely hands off. It was like, Phil is now a known quantity so I’m going to let him go and do his thing. It can work that way too.

Noah Bolmer: Do you have a preference?

Dr. Philip Cross: I mentioned that there are some lawyers that I don’t like working with and that’s when the hand holding gets to the extent that it’s verging on micromanagement. I don’t like being micromanaged. My preference it’s kind of Goldilocks. Not too far one way. Not too far the other way. A little guidance but not too much that you’re veering into micromanaging.

Noah Bolmer: Do you have any pretrial or pre-deposition routines? I’ve had experts tell me they like to drink a lot of coffee, or they like to fast, do yoga or whatever it is that they like to do. Is there anything that gets you in the right headspace?

Dr. Philip Cross: Again, lawyers will give you advice and the advice I get the most is the night before trial don’t do anything [that] varies from your regular routine. If you normally get 8 hours sleep, try to get 8 hours of sleep. If your 8 hours sleep is normally between the hours of 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM, try to make it that, blah blah blah blah blah blah and I have some lawyers that tell me, do the same routine. Sometimes it’s ridiculous advice because for one I could be travelling. I remember one case I was testifying in because there were a lot of witnesses and lawyers and to save some money the law firm rented an Airbnb that everyone was staying in. Everyone was not booking hotel rooms. That’s kind of smart. The issue was this was a crappy Airbnb and the air conditioning didn’t work well. It didn’t work at all. I didn’t get a regular night’s sleep. It was not a regular night for me because I was not at home in in my house where my air conditioning works the way I like it. It lets me get eight hours sleep so. You do what you can, you end up doing impromptu stuff sometimes. So stick to a regular routine. I don’t know if it’s a pre-trial routine. Once you get in there, the spotlight is on, and you start talking then it’s important to stick to your a routine. I’ve been doing this for a while now [which] puts me in a good position because I know what to expect. There are different types of—in deposition testimony as opposed to—in deposition testimony everyone tends to be much more polite.

In a trial situation, there are other things that aren’t trials, they’re called Final Merits Hearings. They are like trials in that it’s the last word that’s going to be said on this particular matter. The judge, arbitrator, or whoever it is, is going to make a decision about which side wins and which side loses. In these Final Merits Hearings, like trials, things can get nasty in a way that they tend to not get in deposition. Earlier in my career, I was caught off guard because I’d done three depositions that year but I hadn’t done a Final Merits Hearing. I came into this Final Merits Hearing and all of a sudden, people are being nasty to me. It caught me off guard a bit, but again, I’m further along in my career, now, I know what to expect. It doesn’t happen all the time but I’m thinking well, that’s one of the things that could happen. We’re in this Final Merits hearing trial and under cross-examination I could be accused of all sorts of nasty stuff. Sometimes, it’s everything short of causing the breakup of The Beatles.

Noah Bolmer: Speaking of getting impeached on the stand and somebody dealing with some of these contentious, difficult situations. How do you keep calm, cool, and collected during all of this? What sort of skills should newer experts be developing to be able to take a step back, take a breath, and be able to manage through the situation?

Dr. Philip Cross: The first tool you need to remember is take a step back and take a breath because if you remember to take a step back and take a breath, ninety percent of the problems you could potentially run into are going to be avoided. I have given testimony where in the heat of the moment, and forgot to take a step back and take a breath. Ten minutes later, the lawyer on my side asked for a five-minute recess and then he said, “Phil, you forgot to take a step back and take a breath.” I stopped and thought about it, “Yeah, I guess I didn’t. Sorry about that. I’ll do better moving forward.” Taking a step back and taking a breath is important. Sometimes you get conflicting advice as well. This doesn’t happen often, but it does happen sometimes. It’s like, “Phil, take a step back, take a breath, and speak slowly [and] speak deliberately. But by the way, you’ve got to be done with your cross examination by the end of the day.” I’m like, “You want to go fast? You want to go slow? You’re like telling me two things at once.” Stuff like that can happen.

Noah Bolmer: Earlier in our discussion, you mentioned Round Table Group. How has it been working with expert witness referral services? Has that been something that’s been valuable in your expert witness career?

Dr. Philip Cross: It’s been of some value and I like having the Round Table Group reach out to me from time to time with potential cases. They’re not the only type of expert search firm that I work with. There are a couple of others that I work with too. I get business through that route, but I’ve got to be frank with you, I get a minority of my business through those routes. The majority of it comes straight from my own direct marketing. I’ve got a website that isn’t particularly slick, but it’s informative. People that are potential clients of mine can go there and quickly see the type of expert I am, and decide if they want to work with me. I have other marketing strategies that I adopt that I think help as well. I’ve been running my own firm for five years, and one of the mistakes I made in the first couple of years was not spending enough on marketing. If you come from a long history of working for somebody else, getting paid a salary, and not having to worry about all these other high-end business decisions, it’s tough. There’s this saying, which is absolutely true, “Fifty percent of your marketing budget is well spent and fifty percent you may as well flush down the toilet. The problem is you don’t know which fifty percent.” And that’s exactly right. When I first started my business five years ago, I wanted complete confirmation that spending a thousand dollars on this, or two thousand dollars on that, was going to give me some bang for my buck. As a result of thinking that way, I didn’t spend enough on marketing because in my experience, you never going to know if you’re going to get bank feedback. You [have] to roll the dice and part of it is just rolling the dice and seeing what happens. I’ve learned to keep my marketing budget a bit higher. Now, I’d say every year it’s probably between five thousand and ten thousand dollars. It varies year to year, but most years my marketing budget wouldn’t be below five thousand or above ten thousand dollars.

Noah Bolmer: Let’s talk about the general a bit. How do you get off on the right foot in a new engagement? How do you know it’s going to be a good engagement? What should the expert be doing and what should the attorney be doing to ensure that it’s going to be effective, efficient, and maybe even a little fun.

Dr. Philip Cross: I’ll refer back to answer I gave earlier. I work with [many] lawyers that I like, but they can have contrasting styles. If I’m working with a new lawyer, it’s important for me to try to figure out the extent that I can. What a lawyer’s style is? Is he more of a hands on, wants to walk me through everything lawyer or is he more a hands-off lawyer? Both styles could work well, but I try to get up to speed with the type of lawyer that I’m working with sooner rather than later.

The other thing is, I often work on cases where I’m not the only expert. There can be other experts as well. In that case, it’s important for me to get an understanding of the role the different experts in this particular engagement, because I don’t want to vier outside of my lane and step on the toes of somebody else. That’s important to get a handle on. Other things are important. I’ve talked a bit about this before as well. I run my own one-man shop and I’m not competing with these big downtown D.C. shops that charge top dollar. I attract a client base that is somewhat price sensitive and so I’m cognizant of that. I try to make sure that the client is on the same page as [I am] as to the next bill. I’m going to give you a bill at the end of the month and just so you know, this is what you should be expecting the bill to be. Oftentimes, I’ll give an estimate for how much it will cost to prepare an expert report, then there’s a wrench in the works and things change a little. At that point, I’ll say to the client, “I wasn’t anticipating this, but it’s come up. I think it’s beneficial if I go and do this other bit of work that wasn’t in the original scope of my work. I just wanted to give you a heads up because it is going to change in what the total billing is going to be,” Sometimes, they’ll say, “Yep, Phil, we’re fine with that.” Sometimes, they’ll say, “Phil, we need you to try and stick to what you told us.” You think you’re going to be doing it, but again, you have to be respective of the client’s wishes in that dimension as well.

Noah Bolmer: That’s interesting. [Speaking of the client], do you often interface directly with the client without the attorney present or is the attorney typically present? When you say client, do you actually mean the engaging attorney?

Dr. Philip Cross: That’s a good question. When I say client, I’m typically referring to the engaging attorney. Most of the time I just deal with the attorneys. Occasionally, I deal with the client as well. I’ve told that I don’t like their style of some attorneys that I work with. One of the styles I don’t like is someone who pulls the actual client in and almost gives them a seat at the table. That makes it hard for me to do my job as a reliable expert, and someone who can opine about things with integrity. There can be, from time to time, the need to learn something from the client, and it’s easier for me to talk directly to the client— to have a conference call with the client, the lawyer, and myself. If that’s the best way to figure out what I need to know, that’s fine. Most of the time, I can say to the lawyer, “I need to know this about the client.” Then the lawyer can go to the client. My preferred situation is one where I never directly even meet the client at all. That doesn’t happen all the time but it happens most of the time. I don’t want things getting to the point where the lawyer is involving the client too much, which does happen from time to time, unfortunately.

Noah Bolmer: Do you have any tent pole cases that you can talk about? Obviously, you might not be able to give any specific names or whatever, that either changed something about the way you go about expert witnessing or reinforced something that you were already doing. What are the important moments as an expert witness that you’ve had throughout your career?

Dr. Philip Cross: I don’t know if I have any tent pole cases. I’m a much better expert witness now than I was five or ten years ago. I’m not thinking of a Eureka moment necessarily where everything fell into place. It’s more my improvements. It’s more incremental and important with each passing year. I work more on different types of engagements, and I learn more. Some lawyers I’ve worked with are freaking smart and I’m like, “Wow.” I learn about how litigation works from these smart lawyers. I also learn a lot about this person who’s at the top of their career in what they’re doing, is inspiring me to try that, even if I’m not a lawyer. I’m in a different line of business, but this person is still impressive, and knows what they’re talking about. I can see why they’re a successful lawyer. If I can channel that more in what I do [as] an expert witness maybe one day I’ll end up in the same position.

Noah Bolmer: Before we wrap up, do you have any final advice for expert witnesses or attorneys that are working with experts?

Dr. Philip Cross: If you’re an attorney and working with an expert, don’t micromanage the expert. If you’re a plaintiff side attorney, try to maintain arm’s length between the plaintiff and the expert. If you’re an expert, starting out, particularly if you’re going it alone with your own business, take billing seriously. Try to give the client or the retaining attorney a good sense of what you think the billing is going to end up being. Another thing is if you can find good junior staff­—as I mentioned before, I’ve got these guys, these students, super smart guys who work for me on a contract basis. They’re a godsend. If you can find people like that, treat them well so that you can keep them for a year or two. I had this one guy who is about to graduate with an MBA. He’ll be off doing a real job and he won’t want to work for me anymore. I’m going to try to get him to help me until the very last day because he’s fantastic.

Noah Bolmer: Outstanding and sage advice. Dr. Cross, thank you for joining me today.

Dr. Philip Cross: It’s been a pleasure, Noah.

Noah Bolmer: And thank you as always to our listeners for joining us for another edition of Engaging Experts. Cheers.

Dr. Philip Cross, Founder of Kenyon Consulting, LLC 

Dr. Philip Cross is the Founder of Kenyon Consulting, LLC, an economic and statistical consulting firm. He has over 20 years of experience as an economist and statistician in academia, government, and consulting. Dr. Cross holds a PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin.