Round Table Group Network: Connects Experts With Lawyers

What is Round Table Group?

Round Table Group is a marketplace for expert witnesses to find lawyers who need their services and for lawyers to find witnesses that can help with a case.

How it works:

There are no specific requirements to sign up. However, you are unlikely to get a gig unless you have many years of experience in your area of expertise.

The site will direct you to plug in your name, title and upload a detailed resume. After that, you simply wait to be contacted when they have a client request that matches your expertise.

You set your own rates with the client. However, RoundTable will provide you with information about high and low rates in your area of expertise, if you want that information.

Round Table Group review:

Round Table Group enlists freelance experts to register to serve as expert witnesses in trials and trial preparation, connecting thousands of expert witnesses every year. All of the site’s income comes from the law firms seeking experts. Experts pay no fees or commissions themselves.

What are your chances of finding a gig here? Remote.

Serving as an expert witness here — and, frankly, anywhere — is hit and miss. Even experts with amazing credentials are enlisted a few times a year at most.

That’s simply because the amount of information you must have at your fingertips to be a great expert witness is huge. And, each case is likely to be fairly unique. In one instance, RoundTable needed to find a veterinarian, who specialized in equine ophthalmology, for instance. That specific expert has not been needed since.

Requirements

Dan Rubin, national business development manager for RoundTable Group, says you must have multiple years of experience in your field to find work here. But the field that you have experience in can be almost anything.

The site has enlisted high school athletic directors to talk about safety practices. Bartenders to talk about when they would cut off an inebriated customer. And academics to talk about a wide array of arcane areas of specialty that they have researched and written papers about. You could be a law enforcement officer, with experience arresting drunk drivers. Or an engineer, with experience building large structures. Or a physical therapist — or a nurse.

What expert witnesses do

If you’ve ever watched a courtroom drama, you probably have an idea of what expert witnesses do. They’re called in by lawyers in high-dollar cases to help a jury understand sometimes technical evidence.

However, there’s a lot more to being an expert witness than what you see on t.v. In fact, expert witnesses are typically enlisted long before a case goes to trial. They review case files and tell attorneys — in person or in writing — their opinions of how the facts of the case conform or deviate from the norm.

For instance, in a wrongful death case, surgeons in the same area of specialty as the accused might be enlisted to look at the medical files to ascertain what happened. Expert witnesses on each side might look at the same facts and opine about whether they believe the accused was justified in acting as he or she did.

They’ll consider whether there were extenuating circumstances that might have caused a bad outcome, even for a skilled surgeon doing a great job. Were there mistakes made? Or was the procedure particularly complicated or fraught with risk? The experts would each report back to the attorneys who hired them with their opinions.

Experts are always expected to give an honest opinion, regardless of whether their opinion supports or damages the case of the lawyer who hires you.

Expert opinions

What if your opinion is averse to your side’s interest? Two things might happen. The lawyer might seek out another expert. Or, the lawyer may opt to settle the case.

It’s only when you believe your side’s case is justified — and the case continues — that you’d be called in to testify in depositions (a pre-court hearing) or at trial.

Notably, too, if you are called in to testify, you need to have a thick skin. The opposing counsel will do his or her best to make you look unqualified. You need to be both clear about your opinion on the case and about your own record. Any uncertainty or stumbles can cost the case.

For this reason, experts who have testified successfully in the past are more likely to be called on again.

Pay

While job opportunities are rare for any given expert, when you do get a gig, it’s almost certain to pay well. Rubin says the cheapest hourly rate on Round Table Group is about $200 hourly. And most experts charge twice that or more. Rates between $400 and $800 an hour are common.

However, the law firms — not Round Table — pay experts. Round Table simply adds a finders fee onto the expert’s rate, which is paid by the law firm, not the expert.

Getting gigs

As we’ve already mentioned, while thousands of expert witnesses are enlisted every year, your chance of being called for a gig depend on what you do. Some fields are highly litigious. Others are not.

However, you can increase your chance of getting gigs if you pay close attention to the legal environment in your field. If you’re, say, a structural engineer and are aware of a building collapse, there’s a good chance that someone is planning to sue. This would be a good time to call your contact at Round Table, says Rubin.

“We have experts who basically do business development for us,” says Rubin. “They tell us about a case that was filed and say ‘I could really lend my expertise here. You might want to pitch me for this…”

Recommendations

If you have the chops to serve as an expert witness, Round Table Group is one of three sites that we recommend. You can sign up with Round Table here.

The other sites that we like are Expert Institute and GLG. Expert Institute is one of the largest expert witness firms in the country and also charges no fees to experts. GLG not only finds expert witnesses, it also connects companies with consultants. As a result, it offers somewhat more opportunity for seasoned experts in many fields.