Should You Register on JurisPro: An Expert Witness Directory

What is JurisPro?

JurisPro encourages individuals to list themselves on the site’s expert witness directory, presumably to find highly-paid expert witness opportunities. But it charges a substantial annual fee to do so.

How it works

If you want to register here, you need to provide a credit card and pay $399 before you’re able to plug in any information.

However, the site says that it will then host a detailed profile about you, and the qualities that would make you the perfect expert witness. This includes your resume, a link to your website, your scholarly articles, and your contact information. If you want, you can even upload an audio file, so prospective employers can hear how you speak.

The site will keep your information listed and available as long as you pay the site’s annual fee.

JurisPro review:

JurisPro is a heavily promoted expert witness directory that charges expert witnesses annual fees to register.

Why might you want to register? To explain, you need to understand what an expert witness is, what they do and how much they’re paid.

What’s an expert witness?

Expert witnesses are highly specialized professionals who can give lawyers — or a jury — context and opinions that can help them understand the facts of a case. As a result, you would only register as an expert witness if you had uniquely deep knowledge about a topic.

For instance, if you were a retired law enforcement officer that specialized in traffic enforcement, you might be enlisted as an expert in DUI cases. Structural engineers, who specifically worked on building skyscrapers, might be enlisted to serve as an expert witness on a suit over a building collapse. Surgeons, specializing in heart surgeries, you be enlisted to testify in a medical malpractice case.

In all cases, your role as an expert witness is to review all the evidence provided. From there, you honestly evaluate how the circumstances in this case conformed or deviated from industry norms and standards. You then report back to the attorney that hired you. And that attorney will determine whether to enlist you for further help, including testifying at depositions or trial.

Gig frequency

Because the information you’re providing is both valuable and relatively rare, you are likely to get paid hundreds of dollars per hour for your time. This can be a great retirement gig for skilled professionals, who want to keep a toe in the workplace without having to work full-time.

However, expert witness gigs are rare.

Unless you’re unusually talented expert in a highly-litigious area of expertise, this is never going to turn into a full-time job. Expert witnesses are needed in thousands of cases every year, of course. But any one expert might be enlisted just once or twice a year, if that. And, if your expertise is in something that doesn’t result in a lot of litigation, jobs could be even more rare.

How do attorneys find you here?

JurisPro allows attorneys to search its database for free. They can sort by topic and state — for instance, “geologist” and “California.” With that description, dozens of profiles will come up with detailed information about each potential expert. Lawyers can contact the experts directly via their phone numbers, listed on the site, or by clicking through to their websites.

Is JurisPro worth the fees?

This is the key question. While $399 is a lot for other types of work, it might only amount to an hour or two of expert witness pay. Thus, if you found one or two jobs a year through this site, the work would easily pay for the cost.

But it’s difficult to know whether JurisPro can deliver enough work to make that happen. We found no independent reviews of the site. (There are thousands of reviews of competing site, Expert Institute, which doesn’t charge sign up fees, by the way.) The only expert witness testimonials for JurisPro are hosted on JurisPro.

However, we also only found one complaint, filed with the BBB. And the complaint was lodged by a client, not an expert. The client maintains that a JurisPro expert scammed her and there is no way to leave a bad review on expert profiles at this site.

Compelling case

By the same token, this complaint highlights what we see as the site’s biggest shortcoming. Because the site collects its money from the experts who list here, that’s who controls the content. And we think this could make the listings less valuable to lawyers who might consider using this site to find an expert witness.

Moreover, where each listing contains considerable information about the experts background, it does not include what that expert witnesses charges. Nor does it provide reviews of these witnesses from past cases.

One lawyer on Quora noted that he only uses services like this when he can’t find an expert any other way. That seems reasonable. But it doesn’t strike us as a good reason to spend nearly $400 annually maintaining a listing here.

Recommendations:

If you have the skills to be an expert witness, we think there are better places to sign up. For instance, Expert Institute offers the same service, but charges nothing to experts. It earns all of its matchmaking fees from the lawyers seeking experts. It also allows you to list hourly rates on the site, as well as the same sort of detailed profile that you’d list at JurisPro.

Round Table Group also offers the same listing service, without any of the fees. And because Round Table matchmakes experts to clients, hiring lawyers get better service with less work here.

Another option would be to sign up with GLG, a freelance consulting site that also helps lawyers find expert witnesses. The advantage of GLG is it can also land you consulting gigs that are not lawsuit-related.

The only time we think it could make sense to sign up with JurisPro is if you wanted to make a near full-time living out of being an expert witness. In that rare case, you might want to sign up with multiple sites to increase your exposure to potential customers. If you want to sign up with JurisPro, you can find them here.

What their users say (from BBB)

I hired one of their experts. She scammed me. She collected my money on ***** and after receiving it closed her Zelle account. There is no way to leave a review on her site with JurisPro. I have written JurisPro twice and gotten no response.

She missed two deadlines. And when she did finally send something, it was totally inappropriate information. Her report regarded infant pain care when [what I needed] was very specific care protocol information regarding an adult patient that had a rare condition where he couldn’t feel any pain. The expert has refused to communicate with me to either refund my money or give me a valid report. And we had lengthy emails prior to my sending the money. She knew what I needed and assured me she was qualified. I’ve told JurisPro all of this and she is still listed on their site waiting for the next unsuspecting victim. JurisPro has not responded to my inquiries. They give people no way to rate their experiences with their ‘expert witnesses’. Be very wary of them.