Although an expert may choose not to charge for an occasional photocopy, with a large number of documents, it is appropriate to pass on the fee to the client. Similarly, an expert who chooses not to charge a fee for an occasional letter should not hesitate to charge a fee for shipping larger packages, express delivery, or international shipments. Jim Mangraviti: Good question. Expert engagement contracts are therefore a special animal. Like many things in expert testimony, what makes it unique in a sense is that it can be found. What do I mean by that? Anything you write in your expert detention contract can be used by opposing lawyers to tear your throat during cross-examination or testimony. So you have to be very, very careful about what you include in your contract. So without a well-written contract, bad things can happen to you as an expert, and you really want one or you are exploited or there can really be a responsibility for you. So it`s like the American Express card when we can make an appointment, they don`t want to leave the house without one if you`re an appraiser. Jim Mangraviti: Thank you, Steve. In fact, we have an expert retention contract that experts can download from our website, and the origin of that, as I mentioned earlier, is that we get calls pretty much every day that the experts have really been exploited by asking for legal counsel.

In the event of any dispute arising out of the terms of this Agreement, the prevailing party will reimburse its reasonable attorneys` fees. Jim Mangraviti: Of course. The first problem would be not getting paid, and that`s a very common problem that evaluators usually have. We are constantly training experts. You know, almost all of them have been stiffened during their careers. So there are a number of simple little things you can do in your contract to mitigate this possibility. Steve Babitsky: Let`s talk about some of the problems that arise when you don`t have a well-worded agreement. Chapter 5 discusses the different approaches used by experts and lawyers to reach an agreement on fees. This appendix contains an example of a fee agreement. It is important that the written agreement provides a clear understanding between the lawyer and the expert on how fees are to be calculated and paid. The other thing you need to keep is that your contract needs to be well balanced.

You can draft a contract that is extremely one-sided for you, but you won`t ask a lawyer to sign it unless you`re the only expert in the world, and that`s a huge case. So you have to have some balance in your contract, okay? So be careful, you can be cross-examined on it. It has to be balanced with something that lawyers are willing to sign. These are two things that worry me. Before using an agreement, the expert witness must always and in all circumstances use the form with his or her own professional liability lawyer (i.e. Do not check with the lawyer hiring the person as an expert to ensure that they fully meet applicable legal, ethical and professional standards, as well as the expert`s needs and approaches. What you really want in your contract is language that says, „Hey, lawyer, you prepare me better,” okay? And the operational clause that keeps all these things going is that you want to have a clause that says, „If the lawyer violates any of these obligations, then as an expert, you have the right to withdraw.” Another simple problem is the cost of storage. Let`s say you`re working on a case that contains a large number of documents, okay? And bankers box boxes of documents for bankers. Want to keep this stuff going until the end of time? No, so we have a clause in our contract that says we recommend you do something similar. He says, „Look, at the end of the order, we`ll pack all the materials and return them to you at your request, or we`ll shred them.

We are not going to stick to these things unless there is another reason why the expert has to stick to the documentation. And over the years, we`ve taken note of all these circumstances that come up over and over again and again, and we`ve designed a contract to deal with all these situations. And the contract is currently successfully used by 2,000 experts, and it`s something that experts can download and then they can customize it to their own needs. This is something I highly recommend. Fourth, you want to have language that at least addresses the potential to be an unethical lawyer. Unfortunately, Steve and I have heard a number of horror stories over the years from the experts we have worked with lawyers who, as Dr. Tom Gutheil would say, suffer from the lawyer hypothesis, which is not a good thing. So you want to have a clause in your agreement that says the lawyer must comply with all the ethical standards that apply to a lawyer. Jim Mangraviti: Okay, well, thank you for the introduction, Steve.

As you know, we are dealing with experts. We help experts as expert training companies and interact with experts on a daily basis. And a lot of what we do are calls and complaints from experts about how they`re basically screwed up withholding legal advice for things that could have been avoided if they had had a well-written expert contract. In addition to the model agreement below, related resources on this website include: Whenever the advance is exhausted, a subsequent advance (for work to be performed in [the city or municipality]) of an amount equal to 10 times the expert`s hourly rate] is due immediately, on which each additional hour is charged at the rate of [hourly rate] per hour. The following example requires all fees to be paid in advance. Advance payment avoids situations in which the expert has made an assessment, written a report, invoiced the lawyer, but has not received full payment by the due date. Second, when it comes to a debt collection situation, the insertion of a clause for attorneys` fees and interest will certainly be helpful, okay? You want to have many clauses in the agreement that give you, as an expert, the opportunity to ensure collection. Any model agreement must, of course, be tailored to the needs of the individual expert, the specific circumstances of the assessment and any laws, jurisdictions and other standards or regulations applicable in the respective jurisdiction.

And the fifth thing I would mention, there`s a whole list you want in your contract, is a lack of preparation. There really is an epidemic in this country of lawyers who, for various reasons, will refuse to prepare their experts to testify, either during their testimony or in court. This agreement is between the name of the expert, the consultant, and Linda Avocate, the client`s lawyer. The purpose of this Agreement is to procure the services of the Consultant in connection with this Master Agreement, which appears in the book MMPI, MMPI-2 & MMPI-A in Court: A Practical Guide for Expert Witness and Attorneys, 2nd edition, by Ken Pope, Jim Butcher and Joyce Seelen, edited by the American Psychological Association. The American Psychological Association owns the copyright. This material is presented here for personal and individual use; For other copyright-related uses, please contact the American Psychological Association`s Office of Rights and Permissions. If the work in the area [city or town where the expert practises] (i.e., the area within 20 miles of [location of the expert`s office]) during this phase (i.e., h. before I am appointed or disclosed as an expert) exceeds 10 hours, an advance in the amount of [amount equal to 10 times the hourly rate of the skilled person] is due immediately; Each additional hour (beyond the initial 10 hours) will be charged at the rate [professional`s hourly rate] per hour. A second common problem faced by experts is incomplete documentation. What do I mean by that? The hiring lawyer doesn`t send them all the documents, okay? We have a clause in our contract. We recommend that you put it in yours. It requires the lawyer to promise to send you everything that is no doubt relevant.

This gives you a bit of protection in this area. Whenever the advance is exhausted, a subsequent advance is due immediately in the amount of 10 times the clinician`s hourly rate, against which each additional hour is billed at the rate [hourly rate] per hour. Unlike the initial costs of opening, reviewing and consulting the file in the amount of [10 times the expert`s hourly rate], which are non-refundable, the unused portion of this next file [an amount equal to 10 times the expert`s hourly rate] (during this period prior to the appointment or assistance as an expert) will be returned when my services are no longer needed. For example, one of the clauses that we have in our agreement as an example is that the expert does not publish a report until he has been paid, okay? Thus, the expert can consider this report as a lever against the lawyer until it is published. .