Litigation Expert Witnesses

Some of the most technically demanding disputes in commercial practice concern the conduct of litigation itself. Clients challenge the reasonableness of fees billed by outside counsel, litigation funders and corporate plaintiffs contest repayment priority and case-control rights, insurers and defense counsel disagree over the handling of covered claims, and law firms pursue e-discovery, document review, and trial technology vendors whose failures disrupted a matter. In each instance, the tribunal must decide whether a lawyer, funder, insurer, or vendor performed the way a competent participant in complex litigation should have. That question cannot be answered from the engagement letter alone, which is why parties turn to professionals who understand how litigation is actually staffed, financed, and managed.

A litigation expert reconstructs the relevant decisions against the professional practices and contractual terms that governed them. In a fee dispute, that means examining staffing, rates, task allocation, and billing entries in light of the complexity and stakes of the underlying matter. In funding and vendor disputes, the analysis turns to agreement structure, service-level commitments, incident logs, or review-quality metrics to show whether a breach occurred and what it cost the client. Where claims involve professional negligence, the expert can distinguish an error that departed from accepted practice from a reasonable judgment call that simply produced an unfavorable result, a distinction that frequently determines both liability and the measure of damages.

Because litigation-practice disputes put the standards of the profession on trial, credibility often turns on whether the expert has carried similar responsibilities at a high level. Round Table Group's network includes a former Attorney General of New Mexico who also chaired the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, complex-litigation attorneys who have testified on attorneys' fees and on RICO, fraud, and arbitration issues, and an insurance claims executive who has published on insurer-defense bar relations and testified two dozen times on claim handling and bad faith. Forensic accountants and construction claims specialists with dozens of testimonies each round out a bench that can address both the conduct and the economics of a disputed matter. Drawing on more than 75,000 expert searches, we can help you find the professional whose experience mirrors the conduct at issue, so let us know what your matter requires by calling us at (202) 908-4500.