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31 July 2007. Experts, sad to say, are not always honest about
their credentials, as several recent news items confirm. Knowing
how to verify the background of an expert – whether yours
or your opponent's – could prove critical to your case.
In perhaps the most dramatic recent example, a New
Orleans federal judge threw out a jury verdict in favor of pharmaceutical
giant Merck & Co. after a cardiologist who testified for the
defense in a Vioxx trial was found to have misrepresented his credentials.
A few weeks earlier in California, a man who fraudulently
passed himself off as a computer forensics expert in two cases pleaded
guilty to federal perjury charges. In Toronto, a psychiatrist had
his license suspended after lying about his credentials while serving
as an expert witness in two trials.
These cases illustrate why it is crucial for trial lawyers to confirm
that an expert is all he claims to be. Vetting an expert's credentials
should be a key step in your trial preparation.
Major legal research services provide many tools for checking an
expert's background, from public records databases to deposition
banks. But these major services can be expensive to use and still
leave bases uncovered.
At the same time, the Web harbors a variety of resources and tools
that contain potentially valuable information but that many lawyers
overlook in researching an expert's background.
Yes, we all now know to check Google, but this article
looks at some of the lesser-known – and mostly free –
research tools you may be bypassing. Of course, these Web tools
are neither foolproof nor exhaustive. No Web site can substitute
for using a reputable expert-search service.
WORDS CAN HAUNT YOU
The old adage, "What you say may come back to
haunt you," has never been more true. With millions of people
posting to blogs and participating in Internet discussion groups,
we are creating permanent records of our words and thoughts –
like it or not.
In light of this, the blogosphere should be among your first stops
in researching an expert's background. Does the expert maintain
a blog? If so, has he said anything there you might regret. Has
he posted comments to others' blogs. Have others written about him,
positively or negatively, on their own blogs?
The best tool for searching blogs is Google
Blog Search. Like Google's Web search, it is comprehensive and
up to date. You can sort results by date or relevance, and you can
search blogs in multiple languages.
A close second for searching blogs is Clusty.
Clusty is not a search engine – it does not crawl or index
the Web. Rather, it is a metasearch tool that calls on other blog
search engines, extracts the relevant information, and then organizes
the results into a hierarchical folder structure – which it
calls "clusters." With this unique approach, it provides
results that are both comprehensive and usefully organized.
Another source of potentially damaging comments by
or about an expert is the Internet's many news groups and discussion
lists. To find postings someone made to one of these, search Google
Groups. It hosts a variety of current groups as well as an archive
of more than 750 million Usenet postings dating back to 1985.
As podcasts become more popular, they also should
be included in a background search. Perhaps the person you are researching
said something pertinent in a podcast or was the subject of someone
else's podcast comment. Several sites claim to search podcasts,
but most of these actually search only the accompanying text –
the title, description, author and any metadata – but not
the audio file.
A handful of tools now enable you to search the full
spoken text of podcasts. One of the best is Podzinger
. It is based on speech-recognition technology developed for
U.S. intelligence to monitor foreign television and radio broadcasts.
It uses this technology to create a textual index of the audio data
in any MP3 or WAV file, converting the spoken words into searchable
text.
NETWORKING SITES
Where professionals once networked at cocktail parties
and civic events, today you are more likely to find them connecting
through any of a number of networking Web sites. The most popular
at the moment is LinkedIn
where members post information about their careers and their connections
and share mutual recommendations. If your expert is listed on LinkedIn,
read his profile carefully. How does his listing compare with what
he has provided to you? Also, look for references from others and
examine his network of connections for any that might help either
verify or call into question his background.
Other business networking sites include Ziggs,
Ryze,
and Orkut.
Of course, be sure also to check personal networking sites such
as MySpace
and Facebook
.
CORPORATE RECORDS
Anyone researching a publicly traded company would
know to check the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR database. But fewer
think to search EDGAR for information about individuals, even though
it may contain a wealth of information. Corporate filings can provide
information on an individual's business affiliations, employment
arrangements, investments, and more. Even an individual's education
and employment history can sometimes be tracked through EDGAR.
If the expert works in the securities industry, two databases worth
checking are NASD
BrokerCheck (19 November 2007: now
FINRA BrokerCheck) which provides information on the professional backgrounds
of current and former NASD-registered securities firms and brokers,
and the National
Futures Association's Background Affiliation Status Information
Center (BASIC) which does much the same for registered futures
dealers.
HISTORICAL WEB
Web sites change over time. If your expert has a Web
site, what it says today may differ from what it said five years
ago. The best way to track historical changes in someone's Web site
is through the Internet
Archive's Wayback Machine. Here, you can find an archive that
captures historical snapshots of sites. While not exhaustive, it
is likely to have at least some pages showing earlier versions of
a site.
PUBLIC RECORDS
Any number of major research systems sell access to
public records. These include LexisNexis,
Westlaw,
ChoicePoint, and Accurint.
But many public records are now available online for little or no
cost. A variety of Web sites help direct you to these online sources
of public records.
One of the best is Search
Systems with links to nearly 40,000 sources of public records
on the Web. It includes links to sources throughout the world, although
the greatest number of sources are in the U.S. and Canada. Not all
sites listed are free, but the site clearly marks those that are
not. Among the listings: professional license registrations, corporate
records, marriage notices, UCC filings, deed registries, birth and
death records, lobbyist listings, physician disciplinary proceedings,
and much more.
Other sites that provide directories of public records and information
include:
-
Virtual
Gumshoe
A good collection of Web resources for public records research.
-
Public
Records Online Directory
Links to state and municipal sites, with an emphasis on real
estate, tax and vital records sources.
-
Merlin
Information Sources
Links to resources for finding public records and public information.
-
Black
Book Online
A free public records site targeted at private investigators,
skip tracers, government investigators and others. Good collection
of links and descriptions.
-
BRB
Publications
provides a fairly comprehensive, state-by-state list of
free public records sites, as well as an index of national sites
and another for Canada and U.S. territories.
SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS
Due to privacy concerns, it is difficult to find social
security numbers on the Web these days. But you can easily verify
that a number is valid and belongs to a living person. Enter a number
in The SSN
Validator and it will tell you whether the number has been issued,
in which state it was issued, when it was issued, and whether any
death claims exist against the number. It will not tell you the
identity of the holder of the number.
PROFESSIONAL CREDENTIALS
Various sources allow you to check the credentials
of public school teachers. The National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards maintains a directory, available at www.nbpts.org/resources/nbct_directory,
of teachers with national board certification. Several states maintain
their own publicly accessible databases of teachers certified to
teach in public schools. New York's for example, is at
http://www.highered.nysed.gov/tcert/teach/index.html.
The best way to find whether one is available for
a particular state is to check the Web site of the state's education
department. A directory of state education department sites is maintained
by the U.S. Department of Education at http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/ccseas.asp.
Other Web sites provide verification of college-level degrees and
attendance for a fee. These include Credentials
Inc. and the National
Student Clearinghouse. Many schools will confirm degrees directly,
although they may require a release.
To check a medical doctor's license, DocFinder
provides a database of license information for participating
states. For states not included in the DocFinder database, the site
provides links to their own license look-up sites.
Most states now have sites for verifying a lawyer's bar admission.
In Massachusetts, for example, it is at http://massbbo.org/bbolookup.php.
You can find these for other states through the state government
Web site. A new site, Avvo
rates lawyers based on publicly available information and compiles
client reviews and disciplinary sanctions.
DOCKETS
Is your expert a party to pending litigation? To find
out in federal court, check the U.S.
Party/Case Index. This is a national index of parties and cases
for U.S. district, bankruptcy and appellate courts. It is updated
nightly. Use of it requires a PACER account. Not all federal courts
participate, but the site includes a list of those that do not.
A service with much the same information that requires no account
is Justia's
Federal District Court Filings & Dockets. This free, searchable
resource contains information on recently filed U.S. district court
civil cases. The database includes cases filed since Jan. 1, 2006
and can be searched by party name, court, and type of case.
Another low-cost option for searching federal court
dockets is Who's
Suing Whom. A private translation and interpretation services
firm offers this tool for searching patent, trademark or copyright
cases pending in federal courts. Search by case type and party name,
court, state or date to find basic case information. There is a
charge to retrieve full-text court dockets.
VITAL RECORDS
Vital records – birth, death and marriage certificates
and divorce decrees – are increasingly available free online
through state and local government sources. Vital
Records Information tells where to find them anywhere in the
U.S. It lists sources for each state, territory and county, and
most cities and towns, along with contact, fee and ordering information.
For records outside the U.S., the site lists links to foreign vital
records sites. This straightforward site is designed with a nod
towards genealogy, but it is one many lawyers are sure to find useful.
EXPERT WITNESS RULINGS
The
Daubert Tracker is a Web site developed specifically to help
lawyers track cases involving the admissibility of expert testimony
and, in particular, find out how specific experts fared in the courts.
Its central feature is a database of all reported cases under Daubert
and its progeny, trial and appellate, backed up when available by
full-text briefs, transcripts and docket entries. Part of what makes
the site unique is that it links cases to experts. Even if the expert
is not named in the court decision, the site's editors track down
the expert's identity.
A year subscription is $295 or you can purchase a
two-hour session for $25 or a half-hour for $10. For free, you can
search the site's collection of more than 10,000 briefs and other
supporting documents from both appellate and trial courts relating
to expert witness testimony. If you find a document you are interested
in, you can also view the first 10 percent of it free. If you decide
you want to purchase the complete document, the cost is $15 for
non-subscribers and $7.50 for subscribers.
WRITINGS
In vetting an expert, it is important to confirm authorship of listed
works as well as to search for any unlisted works that could be
relevant or embarrassing. Two essential resources to check for published
works are the Library
of Congress Online Catalog and the records of the U.S.
Copyright Office. Of course, it also makes sense to check Amazon.com
and Barnes
& Noble.
An increasingly popular resource for scholarly publications
is the Social
Science Research Network . This international collaborative
is home to scholarly research covering more than 400 subject areas.
It contains abstracts of more than 150,000 working papers and the
full text of well over 100,000 published papers. This makes SSRN
an essential source for researching an expert's published papers.
Another useful source is ISI
HighlyCited.com. This site provides profiles and bibliographic
information for the most highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject
categories. For listed individuals, the site provides biographical
information – including education, faculty and professional
posts, memberships and offices, current research interests and personal
Web sites – as well as a full listing of publications, including
journal articles, books, and conference proceedings.
OTHER
The U.S. government maintains any number of databases
that could be relevant to vetting an expert, depending on his field
of expertise. One often worth checking is the Excluded
Parties List System. It provides information on individuals
and companies that are excluded from receiving federal contracts
and federal financial assistance.
When it comes to checking someone's background, more
is better. The more sources you use, the more complete your search.
The free and low-cost resources described here provide useful supplements
to more expensive research services.
© 2007 IMS ExpertServices all rights reserved.
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