How to be an Effective Expert Witness

Serving as an expert witness is both a vital service to the judicial system and can be a significant secondary source of income to an engineer. However, an engineer who is hired to render an expert opinion should be cognizant of the fact that he/she does not want to be known in the legal community as a "professional expert" or an expert whose primary source of income is rendering expert opinions in courts of law, particularly for one specific client or industry. Such "professional experts" are looked upon skeptically by many lawyers as not having the requisite professional gravitas to remain employed in their profession and/or are of the opinion that not staying actively involved in the day-to-day practice of their speciality blunts their professional expertise. Furthermore, serving the cause of only one client or classification of clients (i.e., just plaintiffs or just defendants or a particular corporate entity) gives an impression of bias, that you are an advocate for a client, or that your expert opinion is not independent but "for sale".