How Should You Limit the Information You Give to Your Expert Witness?

When you work with an expert witness for your financial law case before the case goes to trial or before you start negotiating a settlement, you gain an expert’s insight into the best strategies to weigh the case in your client’s favor. You’ll even get a better idea of what to expect from the opposition and how to minimize any items potentially damaging to your client. It may seem strange, then, to limit the information you provide your witness, but it’s recommended solely to expedite the case.

Start With the Basics

The point of limiting information you hand over to your expert witness services is simply to keep the focus where it should be — on helping your client win the case. Wading through too much information takes up time. Give your witness an overview of the most important facts to start and follow his lead when it comes to handing over more information as he requests.

Pull Repetitive Information

Don’t leave it to your witness to sort through repeated information; it’s a waste of the time you’re paying him to work. Put aside anything that simply reinforces previously established information. If your witness wants access to more documentation, he’ll let you know.

Provide Everything Potentially Unfavorable

Withholding some information from your expert witness is about expediency, not about “hiding” facts from your witness. He’s your witness — hired to make the case for your side. When you hire him before going to trial, he needn’t even present his findings to the opposing side. Provide all potentially unfavorable information and he can actually help you strategize how to combat it.

Arrange an appointment with the office of Michael F. Richards as early as possible into your case. If facts change as you progress through the matter, you can arrange another appointment later on so we can adjust our recommendations appropriately. However, you needn’t provide every new bout of information unless you think our expertise will come in handy in light of the new facts.

Financial Law and the Expert Witness: Reasons It’s Better to Know Detrimental Facts in Advance of Your Court Date

Too many law firms only consider hiring an expert witness when they’re certain his testimony will prove an asset to their case in court. However, expert witnesses aren’t limited to testifying before a judge and/or jury. It’s best for everyone involved in financial litigation to call in an expert witness as soon as possible in advance of a potential court date.

He’ll Find Overlooked Issues

With decades of experience in finance, Michael F. Richards, financial expert witness, can prove an integral component of your legal strategy. Your firm doesn’t have to retain a witness to testify before anyone else; instead, we can look over the facts of the case and point to issues you may have overlooked that the other side may not miss. After your law firm spends weeks or even months embroiled in the details of the case, a third party expert is sometimes necessary to find these issues.

It Gives You Time to Prepare

A witness will help you strategize a defense against any of these issues that may prove unfavorable to your client. Since the other side will likely bring them up during settlement negotiation or a trial, it’s best to expect the attack and to have your defense ready to lessen or remove any effect these points will have for your client.

Missing Components

An expert witness may also help you find out that something’s missing in the documents associated with the case — something that may help your strategy against the other side. If the missing item is unfavorable to your client, it gives your firm time to make it right and produce the missing information before it’s used against your client during the negotiation or judgment.

Contact the office of Michael F. Richards to learn more about how our expertise can assist in your financial legal matter. Whether you represent a financial institution or a group of individual, it’s best to know ahead of time which issues the other side may rise in order to turn the verdict in their favor.

Should You Bring in a Financial Expert Witness for a Bank Audit?

If you represent a financial institution as a client or you work for the institution itself and there’s a call for an audit, you have a lot on your plate to make sure the audit is as accurate as possible — especially if the audit is part of a larger, ongoing legal case or investigation. It may not immediately come to mind to call in a third party financial expert witness, but in the vast majority of bank audits, hiring an expert witness is a smart move.

Comparisons to Similar Cases

The right litigation support specialist has decades of experience in the finance industry and can easily reference similar cases to support your client’s case. In the event of problems found during the audit, you need your case ready to support causes and solutions for the error so your business is affected minimally. An expert witness can review similar cases that ruled favorably for the financial institution to help make the bank’s case.

Better Organization

The more organized your records, the easier your audit will go. An expert can help you identify all of the records necessary to make the best case for the bank. He can also provide tips for going forward and implementing different practices to make record-keeping more straightforward and the need for audits less likely from now on.

Depositions

If an audit leads to or is already part of a court case, an expert witness provides an independent professional’s expertise as a witness during the case or even during a deposition. With the right testimony, a deposition alone can lead to settlement instead of a trial.

Contact the offices of Michael F. Richards in the event of an audit, even if government representatives or court-assigned officials are performing the audit itself or even if the process has already begun. He can also help a financial institution prepare for a possible audit even if there’s no immediate call for one. A more organized system will ensure audits go more smoothly.

Do Expert Witnesses Work Better for Individual or Group Clients?

When it comes to financial law, attorneys with expertise in the industry represent the gamut, from financial institutions to individuals to groups for class action lawsuits. When considering adding an expert witness to the case, you might be wondering if he’s better suited for cases with a single client or cases representing a group of people or a business. Depending on what you intend to rely on the witness for, there’s a compelling case to hire him regardless.

Benefits for Individuals

The range of expert witness services extends beyond the typical testimony in court, but that testimony is especially invaluable for individuals. Because the individual may be the only available witness to testify who’s involved with the case on your client’s side of the matter, it helps to expand the roster of credible testimony by inviting an expert in the industry to speak on your client’s behalf.

Benefits for Groups

Likewise, when representing a group, you won’t have time to parade each individual onto the stand or even to make a statement in a deposition — and you may not even find it expedient to have any of the people testify at all. An expert can speak on behalf of the group at large and has the credibility to make a compelling argument founded on knowledge of similar cases.

Benefits for Businesses

When representing a business such as a financial institution or a real estate company, the expert witness can act as a third party expert to demonstrate that there’s precedent for the case, as well as to act as a consultant when prepping the case or during a deposition.

Michael F. Richards has offered his decades of experience to provide witness testimony and services for plaintiffs and defendants in cases representing individuals, businesses and groups. Most firms find it expedient to have him on retainer to call upon for multiple cases. Call today to learn more.

What Kinds of Cases Might Surprisingly Benefit from a Financial Expert Witness?

Financial law cases involving banks and other creditors frequently call on the services of a third party financial expert witness to progress the case and help definitively reach a conclusion or settlement. However, banks and individuals involved in a case against banks are not the only entities to benefit from a financial expert witness. Have an expert witness on call whenever you deal with cases where financial matters play a prominent role in the proceedings, even if the case doesn’t seem to focus much on finance.

Real Estate

One of the most surprising but also most common types of cases that benefit from financial expert witness services are real estate cases. Michael F. Richards can testify or consult on behalf of a buyer, seller or even real estate agency when a contract is in dispute. He can also advise along the way, using similar cases as precedent that could give you a new outlook on the course of the case.

Collection

If you’re owed money, a financial witness can help you procure it based on the letter of the law and precedent in similar situations. Whether you represent a collection company, a business with an unpaid invoice or a landlord with renters behind on rent, we can help.

Fraud

Finances are often a part of fraud cases — particularly since finances are among the most common reasons behind perpetuating fraud to begin with. Michael F. Richards has the expertise you need to uncover fraud and pursue legal recompense.

Get in touch with the offices of Michael F. Richards and ask about the viability of having a financial expert witness testify or otherwise assist during the progression of your upcoming or current legal matter. It’s better to have an expert witness on retainer to be called on short notice than to discover too late that a witness would have made a big difference in the case.