Expert Institute recommends the following best practices to streamline billing processes with the attorney and ensure you receive payment in an expeditious manner. As an expert witness, you may develop your own preferences for your billing cadence – the following are simply recommendations.
- Fee schedule: It is required that you develop a fee schedule to guide payment for your expert witness work. This fee schedule should be uploaded to your Expert iQ profile and will be shared with the attorney following your initial interest in a case. Your fee schedule should be broken down into hourly rates for record review, any time spent at deposition, and any time spent testifying in trial. Additional hourly rates may also be defined for time spent completing an inspection or doing an independent medical examination. An expert may additionally choose to bill at an hourly rate for trial testimony. If you require assistance setting your fees, please visit https://www.expertinstitute.com/resources/expert-witness-fees/.
- Retainer: Expert Institute recommends that you request a retainer payment before beginning work. We typically suggest that an expert request between 3-5 hours of payment at their record review rate. If an attorney approves this retainer, the expert should outline this in their retainer agreement.
- Billing cadence: If as an expert, you reach the amount of time working on the case that you have been paid for in the initial retainer, it is recommended that you contact the attorney before proceeding with the review. Please confirm that the attorney would like you to spend additional time reviewing the records and agree upon a specified number of how much before continuing with the review. An attorney may feel blindsided if they receive a large bill for 10+ hours of work reviewing a case if they did not approve an expert spending this time doing so.
- Travel: An expert witness may be required to travel for site inspection or an independent medical examination. Additionally, travel may be required to testify at trial if the case proceeds to that point. It is recommended that you outline in your retainer agreement a rate at which you would desire compensation for travel and any additional expenses that would be associated with this.
- Invoicing: Expert Institute recommends that you utilize Stripe payments located on Expert iQ to streamline payment for expert witness work. Through Stripe, you can create an invoice, send it directly to your case’s lead attorney, and receive payment through the electronic platform.
Expert Institute: Since Expert Institute steps out of the picture at the point of retention, please communicate with the attorney directly to receive payment. If you have an overdue invoice, please attempt to coordinate directly with the attorney’s office to render payment. If you are not able to reach a successful resolution, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your case researcher to check in with the attorney’s office as well.