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Expert Witness Services For Law Firms – Pop-up Episode
Categories: Podcast
LET'S PARTNER UP AND MAXIMIZE YOUR FIRM


In this pop-up episode, Tyson interviews Paul Lee, the Director of Business Development at The Expert Institute. The Institute connects attorneys with expert witnesses in all specialty areas. Listen as they go over what The Institute does and how it can help lawyers and law firms.

 

Topics:

    • What the Institute does?
      • Streamline the entire process from the start when a potential client walks through the door; reviews, screening, experts
      • Offices in Dallas, NY and Los Angeles
      • Their team of physicians should be viewed as an extension of your firm
      • Partnership program; unlimited access to their suite of services
      • Focus on experts who work on their specialty; true experts
    • Transparent as possible
      • No contracts
      • A technology software that connects lawyers with true experts
      • Research team

 

  • All kind of experts

 

      • The institute will find the best expert for you
    • The Challenge Study
      • Extensive check on the experts they provide

 

  • Detailed reports on opposing experts

 

 

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Transcripts: Expert Witness Services For Law Firms

Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum lawyer podcast. Podcast.

Tyson Mutrux
Welcome back to the max lawyer podcast. This is Tyson nutrix. This is a pop up podcast and I’ve got a really special guest today Paul Lee with the expert Institute. Paul, you want to introduce yourself and talk about what you do and what the expert Institute?

Paul Lee
Yeah, absolutely, Tyson. Thanks for having me on. Again, my name is Paul Lee. I’m the Director of Business Development here at the expert Institute. We connect attorneys with expert witnesses in all specialty areas. And really what we’re trying to do is streamline the entire process of not only sourcing these folks, but also helping the attorneys screen their cases, for, again, any type of case Personal Injury premises product liability concerns, medical malpractice, you know, after speaking with 1000s of attorneys, most law firms find experts through a few buckets, and it’s either to listservs, or through word of mouth or their own Rolodex that they’ve built up throughout the years, or even other experts, referral type agencies which can come with its own set of issues. But again, it’s all disaggregated. It’s all ad hoc. And what we’re trying to do is streamline this entire process from from the start when a potential client walks through the door. And you’re not even sure if you want to take the case, because you’re not sure if the case warrants any further time or investigation. You know, our company can help screen that by way of phone consultations. We have 12 physicians that work with us full time. They’re here at the expert Institute. And, you know, they span across all three of our offices. We’re headquartered in New York City, we have an office in Dallas, and I’m based out of our office in Los Angeles. But you know, this, our team of physicians should be viewed as an extension of your firm, the law firm, available to review records on your behalf screen cases and answer any quick questions. You know, it’s especially helpful for those cases where you’re sort of on the fence in terms of devoting the time or resources. And you’re not sure if the case warrants that the for the time and investigation and you can send us the materials, our doctors do not charge an hourly rate for that. It’s all included in what we call our partnership program, where instead of paying us any incremental fees, you would have us on call for unlimited access to our suite of services, which would of course include the case clinics to case screenings, in addition to the actual experts sourcing engagement. So we have a research team and house over 5060 members who day in and day out host phone interviews with experts and in all types of fields, screening your case, and of course, doing our due diligence, beforehand, running all the necessary checks into conflicts of interest, background checks, dobbert, fried challenges, all within a pretty short timeframe. Three to five business days is our standard turnaround time. But more importantly, we’re actually speaking with these individuals, making sure that they have a solid understanding of what the case is about. And that they’re essentially onboard and ready to review the case on your behalf. We’ll arrange for conference calls, make sure that it’s a good fit, giving you the opportunity to relay the fact patterns, buy them directly, get a better sense of their background, their direction on the case, and just making sure that you’re comfortable before moving forward. And once we’ve made that successful connection, you work with the experts directly. So we don’t have any contracts with any of these folks, we actually avoid experts who advertise as such or in lists themselves in these, I guess expert witness directories. And rather focus on individuals who work in their specialty day in and day out or treat patients on a daily basis to experts in their fields. And we don’t handle the billing, we don’t markup the risks. We don’t middleman the process after the fact. Everything would be managed directly between the expert and in yourself. So I’m

Tyson Mutrux
going to mention that because I had an attorney that I was talking to you the other day and I was bragging about you all because we’ve been using you all for about a year and I think you all are amazing. I want to talk about something a second where you all don’t don’t just deal with the medical side, you deal with everything. But I was talking to an attorney the other day. She’s like, well, you know, I heard that expert Institute. You know, they get all these hired guns and that can be used against you in a trial. Oh, the you got you got it confused. That’s not what expert Institute does. So you sort of already addressed that. We talk a little bit more about that, that this isn’t something that is going to be able to be used against you in trial. because you’re not, you’re not working with these hired guns, you’re not paying them directly.

Paul Lee
Exactly. So we actually avoid that and saw very early on, we want to be transparent, as transparent as possible in working with the attorneys and the experts, which is why we don’t have any contracts. Again, we avoid any of these folks, you know, they’re advertising online as so called expert witnesses. And again, rather focus on people who are treating patients and more importantly, patients in a similar setting to what the case calls for, at the heart of it, you know, we really spin ourselves as a technology platform. We have proprietary software in house that aggregates data on experts from multitude of sources, Westlaw, LexisNexis, PubMed and, and all of this information gets aggregated into our system. And really, this is the engine that our research team, our doctors, as well as our multidisciplinary research team would tap into, to leverage this network and have these conversations with these experts. And yeah, we do very much pride ourselves in the fact that, you know, we’re getting true industry or thought leaders in their fields on the phone with our attorney clients.

Tyson Mutrux
So it’s interesting. So I had a very specific type of expert that I needed a bout a month ago, and this certain expert met the criteria and someone from your office called me and said, Well, just you know, they do advertise, you still want to talk to them. In that case, I did. But it is something that you will do pay a lot attention to swim. And that’s something I really do appreciate. So I had a an expert, and that was through you all couple of weeks ago, and it was for a trucking case. We talk a little bit about can you talk a lot about the medical stuff that you talked about the other the other outside experts that you all have access to?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I know I’ve been harping a lot on the medical portion, but the medical side is 50% of what we do. And 50% is everything else, as we’ve mentioned, trucking patients, OSHA construction defects, premises product liability cases. And, you know, while we have this extensive network, that we can certainly have you guys work together correctly with this sort of consultative element is very much replicable on that non medical side, where, you know, if you’re working with us, we can easily arrange for these phone consultations. With these, I guess non medical experts, strictly as more of a due diligence measure. For example, we received a case the other day, a young girl who is in the back of a school bus, she opened the back door and fell on the road and was severely injured. The law firm came to us to find the expert on school bus safety. And yeah, sure, we can do that and get you connected with the right folks. But you know, we’re very proactive in our approach. And we told them, hey, we can also get you an expert who designs or installed these child safety locks on the school buses, if they were to see if there’s any defects if they were installed correctly. And yes, there are any potential defects in these locks. We also got another expert that conducts seminars for school bus drivers, who speaks in auditoriums of 100 or so drivers and teach them about regulations and the latest codes and the standards by which they should be abiding by also got them an expert, and superintendent of a neighboring school district who bets and screens bus drivers and companies conduct background checks and make sure there’s no complaints and make sure that they hire the best people. And we also got them on the phone with a bus actual bus driver, local to the area where the case was based out of who’s someone who’s driving the same routes for the past 30 years never had an accident can talk about how he deals with kids misbehaving or getting out of their seats, unruly kids. And ultimately, we were able to connect them with multiple experts, two or three of which they actually retained, but they were able to speak with a bunch of different specialties or specialists to get a more holistic approach towards that case. And I can name a bunch of case studies. But that one just comes to mind just, I guess, to showcase our utility in these phone consultations strictly or beyond the actual expert retaining portion.

Tyson Mutrux
So I want to there’s something I’m gonna flip back to the medical stuff, I just wanna make sure you’ve got that part out. I want to make sure people know that you don’t just did medical, but you will do something and I can’t, you’ll probably know the name of this. I can’t remember the name of it. It’s called like a charge document or charge paper will basically at the other side endorses an expert. You can give I can give you all the name and you can give me a rundown of information on that. Dr. What do you call them?

Unknown Speaker
Oh, yes. They’re called our challenge. Study. Yes. So

Tyson Mutrux
you challenge that? Yeah, can you Talking about your challenge study.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I mean, essentially, you know, we do an extensive check on the experts that we provide, by way of our technology platform, we have all of this information. And of course, we clear all that before providing these experts to the law firms. But we can also provide detailed reports on opposing counsel experts, as you say, you know, if you have the name, and any identifying factors of the other side’s experts, you can send that to us. And within a couple of days, we can issue reports, providing circumstances, or providing an overview of the experts dobbert and five challenge history and the circumstances surrounding that, you know, they’ve ever been excluded in prior testimony, things of that nature. It’s just an extra tool in your in your back pocket, you know, when you’re heading into deposition or trial, just an extra tool that you can that law firms can utilize to our program.

Tyson Mutrux
It’s really kind of cool. I mean, the last one, I got to have information about how that that doctor’s testimony had been struck down. And it was it was actually in the case law you gave me the case was actually really, really interesting. So it’s really great. Another thing I want to talk about is your billing. It’s fantastic. So we talked a little bit about how you will get paid, but then also how you’re able to bill into the case. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Unknown Speaker
Sure. So historically, our firm I’ve always been driven on a transactional basis. And we’ve built a lot of success. But over the past several years, what we’ve done is transition away from this sort of one off ala carte model, and instead work with a lot of folks under the partnership agreement that I spoke of earlier. So it’s a subscription based service, where again, instead of paying us any incremental fees, you would have us on call for unlimited access to our experts searches, the record reviews, the quick phone consultations, the questions with our doctors and the challenge studies. And we typically start off on a six month trial, it really depends upon the number of users at the firm number of practice areas and just overall expected volume, we wouldn’t propose the same to you know, a solo practitioner to, you know, a 5050 person midsize firm. So what we do is pricing accordingly. And to make that see the six month trial fee more palatable is that we can issue payment receipts for those cases that those cases that you work up to say, for instance, you send us a case, maybe a records on a cardiac surgery case that you’re working up, and we have our doctors take a look. And they say, you know, they reviewed the records that gave you the green light and say great Tyson sounds like a good case, let’s get the actual experts on board for further consultations. After a few rounds of that, you know, you say I like to go ahead and retain Dr. XYZ, great, you can work with them directly and go from there, you can then request a receipt, so that you can build back a portion of the subscription expense towards that file. So, you know, we’ll issue a payment receipt will have the name of the case, the experts specialty, the amount reflecting the work that was rendered, typically in $2,500.20 $500, that would have been paid otherwise, through our transactional model. So you would allocate a portion of the subscription, the trial expense towards that case. So at the end of the period, you should have used this on enough engagements to recoup the entire cost of the program. Also having the benefits of the phone consultations and all the other deliverables you would have access to.

Tyson Mutrux
Or I could not have explained that better. So that’s great. Hopefully people understand that. It’s a huge, huge advantage whenever you do it, I highly recommend you all. Before we wrap things up, you want to tell everyone how to get in touch with you.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. You can reach me at my direct dial 310-499-2445. You can also find me online at or my profile under the expert Institute’s dot com. And my email handle is Paul, the expert Institute’s dot com.

Tyson Mutrux
Alright, awesome stuff. Paul, anything else you want to add before we wrap this up?

Unknown Speaker
Yes. You know what, I think we’re actually making a landing page. And you know, I can share that URL with you bison after after the call. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we work nationwide Tyson, not just in St. Louis, Missouri, but you know, across the, across the whole country, but we do a lot of work with a lot of your peers, a lot of highly esteemed professionals who work in similar practice areas and would very much like to spread the word and get exposure to a lot of your friends.

Tyson Mutrux
Absolutely. Some of the best attorneys I know use you all and that’s how we think you will contact us but we we knew that from the other big name attorneys that we know we’re using you also I’ve been extremely satisfied. So thank you, Paul, so much for coming on and hopefully people get in touch with you. I’ll post landing page in our in our show notes. Great.

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