How I Began Expert Witnessing: Seven Stories

The paths to becoming an expert witness are as varied as the experts themselves. Guests on our podcast, Discussions at the Round Table, share their “getting started” stories.??

Digital media forensics expert Michael Primeau:??

I began showing signs of wanting to be an engineer when I was very young, taking apart toys and trying to figure out how they worked. The meat and potatoes of our business were in audio and video production, but Dad practiced audio and video forensics with that. He began growing the [family] firm when there was an opportunity to shift more into the digital realm. When digital audio and video evidence started hitting critical mass, there were more recorders, cameras, and phones recording evidence, we went full-blown forensics, and I began my pursuit in audio engineering. Back in high school, I started learning more about studio recordings, production, and playing with microphones, and was also a musician, so, I pursued an undergraduate degree in audio engineering technology from the University of Southfield, Lawrence Technological University. Then I began my career in forensics by pursuing certifications through agencies like LEVA, which is the Law Enforcement and Emergency Services Video Association. I have some training from the University of Colorado Center for Media Forensics and then began getting training and tools that we use to provide digital media analysis. Some of the big names include Axon and the AMP product line. As more and more digital evidence started to be recorded, more and more needs began coming to our firm to clarify and authenticate those recordings.?

Art appraiser expert Lisa Barnes:??

I was always passionate about art, but when I first went to college in Boston, I thought I would be a psych major. Then I was able to study in Paris and took my first course in Art History and I became passionate about business. I tried to navigate myself through those processes and was studying at the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume. I came back to Boston, and I went to Oxford, and I met a mentor who said you should study at Sotheby’s. They have a great program. So, I went from there and came back to the United States after studying in London and started an art consultancy business. I advise corporations spending money and our investment firms, and I moved to New Zealand […]. When corporations were not investing, the appraisal business was always needed for insurance and estates. My career as an expert witness developed. Eighty percent of my business is as an expert witness. Art crimes, scams, and schemes are the second largest crimes in the world, so I found myself [in] this interesting predicament and got involved with many interesting cases.?

History Expert Dr. Roger Launius:??

I was a fan when I was a 10-year-old watching rockets go up. What could be more fun? That is my background. It went away for a while. I did not focus on that when I was doing my educational activities, but I came back to it. I took a job working for the United States Air Force after I finished my Ph.D., and the Air Force was a place where I learned that the history of flying was a very cool thing to write about in addition to watching it from afar. Ultimately, I moved to NASA as the chief historian and spent 12 years in that function. Then for the last 15 years of my career, I was the Associate Director for Collections and Curatorial Affairs at the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution. [. . .] I did not actively seek [expert witness work]. While I worked for the federal government, I had been involved in a couple of different court cases and on behalf of the United States government in those settings—preparing background materials, historical documentation, and things of that nature. In a couple of cases, I ended up testifying at those particular trials, but it was not a major feature of what I was doing. Since I retired, I have been involved in a couple of cases as an expert witness. I am still a novice when it comes to this, although I do have a strong background in aerospace. So, if there is a need for that kind of information in a particular case, I am a person they can call upon and they have done so on a few occasions.?

Financial services expert Glenn Bierman:??

My first career was as a kindergarten teacher. I taught kindergarten for two years. Then, I couldn’t find work in technology, and ended up on Wall Street. Being a kindergarten teacher was the best education for Wall Street because every investment banker, broker, and investor I spoke with had the attention span of a 5-year-old, and if they didn’t get the value proposition in the first three sentences, they were gone, so it’s helped me through my career. I evolved from that to working with attorneys asking me if I [could] get involved or a friend saying, “I have a friend that got hurt in the market. Can you help him with the FINRA arbitration?” I evolved into it.?

Corporate Finance expert Dr. Elliot Fishman:?

How did I get into the field? Well, it was kind of by accident. After my Wall Street career, I was a college professor at New York University Stern School of Business and Stevens Institute of Technology. During that seven-year stint as a college professor, I was asked by a colleague, a friend of a friend from a major law firm—now Law 50 firm—who was doing some analysis on a derivative of the Madoff fraud case. It was the largest securities fraud case in United States history, and they had hired some experts from the big firms. This is a derivative of the Madoff-related case. It was the reallocation of proceeds after the bankruptcy hearing, and this attorney and their economist friend were not happy with the result. Their so-called experts were providing for them—even though they came from big firms—they could not look at it the same way I was able to as both a college professor and having practiced on the street portfolio. [. . .] To make a long story short, I stumbled into it and was asked to look at someone’s report. I put on my college professor’s hat and found some issues with how the report was read. I suggested a different way of looking at it. Before I knew it, I had been asked to replace the big firm that had been consulting on the case for many hundreds of hours, and I wound up writing my independent expert report and testifying in that position on the case.?

Statistics expert Dean Barron:??

I always felt numbers were my friends and I always gravitated towards statistics, even in grade school so that part was pretty clear to me. But in terms of eventually becoming an expert witness, that was not planned at all. In fact, I was performing some statistics for a bank up in San Francisco and I would stay for few days at a time, up in the Bay Area, [. . .] there was a synagogue I liked to go to, and I would meet people there […], but I didn’t talk about business. Then I bumped into someone that I knew, and I said to her, “By the way, what do you do?” and she said, “Oh, I’m a lawyer.” I said “Oh. That’s interesting.” [She said,] “What do you do?” I said, “Well, I’m a statistician.” and she paused for a moment, and she said, “You know, we’re losing a court case pretty badly. Would you be able to help us?” and I said, “Well, I’ll take a look and if I can help you, I’ll help you, and if not, I’ll try to find someone that I can suggest that you contact,” and she said, “Okay, that sounds fair.” Thankfully, not only was I able to help, it turned the entire case around and they wound up very favorably resolving the case, and then they referred more cases and they had colleagues and compatriots, and so really, that was how it started.?

Dermatology expert Dr. Howard Maibach, M.D.:??

I was not looking for it, it was out of the blue. A few years into my joining the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), a senior faculty member asked to meet with me. He had a son-in-law who needed some expert witness help. I assured my senior faculty member and another department—a wonderful gentleman—that I had no experience. He said, “That’s all right.? You’re the only one I know that can do this. Everybody else has turned me down.” Common sense told me that I want to know more than just pleasing a faculty member. So, he sent me the medical records and his young son-in-law—the lawyer in a little town in Northern California—was on the right side of fairness. I reviewed the records more intensely, got all the literature, and on the appointed day took the early morning flight to the little town in Northern California. I was then able to get from the little airport to a courtroom in the little town. When I got into the courtroom, I realized I had no idea where I belonged in the little courthouse. Eventually, somebody working in the courthouse saw a lost young doctor and said, “I know exactly where you belong, but who are you?” I told him who I was, and he said, “Son, you’re in trouble. Do you know who the opposing side is?” I said, “No, I do not.” He said, “Well, it is the District Attorney. They eat you up for breakfast.” I was intimidated before I got to the courthouse, but with that comment, I was more intimidated, but I did give my testimony. The jury agreed with me. For decades after that, the gentleman with whom I had breakfast had me take care of his family and represent him in other cases. What did I learn from that? I learned not to be intimidated.?

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