7 ms·
There's a lot more going on here than the initial story reports. For more than a few academics, making big $$$ as an expert witness is a magnificent source of
by GCA10 3y ago
There's a lot more going on here than the initial story reports.
For more than a few academics, making big $$$ as an expert witness is a magnificent source of side income. (Fees of $1,000/hour, including lots of open-ended prep time, can be found.) That begs the question: Did the research lead to the desire to be an expert witness? Or did the desire to be an expert witness define the nature of the research project?
We'd need to know a lot more about the origins of this project before being able to referee this one. But if the state of California is worried about litigants using "researchers" to find and filter data that ordinarily would be available only through legal discovery processes, that's not a crazy worry.
- AlbertCory 3y agoI went to the Apple v. Samsung trial in 2016 or so, and the highest paid expert witness that day was $850. The other two were $450 and $350. Where are you getting this number? The prep time is included in your hours. The $850 guy said he'd put in 900 hours. (btw, it IS excruciatingly boring work. But of course, the money.)
- angrais 3y agoSo the $850 guy got $850×900? So $765k? How many months were the 900 hours split over? This sounds absolutely ridiculous
- onionisafruit 3y agoIt's great pay if you can get it, and I'm sure it wasn't enough to be noticed in the legal costs of that case.
- nonethewiser 3y agoJust for frame of reference, there are 2080 work hours in a year assuming 40hrs/week. So imagine making 765k for like 5 months of work.
- viscanti 3y agoThey need to be able to have 5 months where they can clear the calendars and just work on that. It's still a lot for 5 months, but I imagine there's a lot of downtime too. Are they getting 5+ months every year?
- mrguyorama 3y ago>hey need to be able to have 5 months where they can clear the calendars and just work on that Otherwise known as "having a job"
- viscanti 3y agoYeah. Having a job seems like it could keep you from regularly being able to stop everything for 5 months of high paid work. Maybe the money is enough from the few months that they're fine with it (and maybe it's easy for them to get a new job after or go back somewhere they've worked before). I'm genuinely curious. It seems like a lot to make for 5 months, but what do their earnings look like over a 5 or 10 year period?
- nonethewiser 3y agoI suppose its actually spread out over a long period of time
- psunavy03 3y agoGo look at what partners at the biggest white-shoe law firms make. Over $1,000/hr.
- grogenaut 3y agoIs that what they make or what they BILL. IT, Admin staff, paralegal, Jr lawyers, building, pro Bono and other marketing activities etc. It's paid for somehow.
- johndhi 3y agobelieve it or not, they make more! they make money off of what the associates and junior partners bill, too. but yes, that figure is what they bill.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- teachrdan 3y agoI believe paralegals and junior lawyers bill for their time, too, also at eye-watering rates.
- AlbertCory 3y agoThe witness actually got that $850 an hour. The other stuff you mentioned was absorbed by the law firm and billed to the client(s).
- rrix2 3y agoare they being called in as expert witnesses?
- psunavy03 3y agoThe discussion was whether billing over $800/hr was "ridiculous." It's actually common for credentialed professionals who are at the very top of very specific fields.
- AlbertCory 3y agoNot for Samsung. Or Google. Apple's damages expert got paid $2 million.
- vasco 3y agoOne month of work for $765k. I was expecting one or two orders of magnitude lower payouts for a single expert witness in a single case. Who can afford to pay this?
- neurocline 3y agoI’d love to hire people that can work 900 hours in a single month. Just tell me where to find them. Or, wait, maybe they work in higher dimensions. Drat.
- roamerz 3y agoAI
- AlbertCory 3y agoWhere are you getting this "single month" stuff?
- olddustytrail 3y agoThe person they're replying to who said "one month". One is singular.
- AlbertCory 3y agoI didn't say that, though.
- olddustytrail 3y agoThey weren't replying to you, they were replying to neurocline.
- AlbertCory 3y agothen they should have replied directly to neurocline, who didn't say anything about 900 hours.
- coding123 3y agonot sure if $850 is an hourly, but $850 after 2016->2023 inflation is $1095 per hour
- HWR_14 3y agoThe witness you are talking about was Martin Rinard.
- junofan 3y agoInflation easily puts $850 over the $1k mark today.
- AlbertCory 3y agoSo you're ignoring two of the numbers and just taking the third? That guy was a star.
- Fezzik 3y agoI litigated mesothelioma cases and our experts were paid $600-$1,100/hr, depending on the expert. $1,000 is high but not unheard of. What’s really wild is, in addition to prep time, they get paid that from the second they cross the threshold of their front door through when the return; many of our experts were flown in from the middle of the country to Oregon so they sure pocketed hefty sums.
- prepend 3y agoI think there are cost maximizing lawsuits (like mesothelioma) and then lawsuits that aren’t seeking to recover damages. And they pay their expert witnesses very differently. I also think there are many academics unwilling to serve as expert witnesses for tort lawsuits and they are different from “professional” expert witnesses.
- AlbertCory 3y agoGood point. I doubt there's much money involved in this Stanford thing.
- johndhi 3y agoI worked on that trial! Maybe I saw you there :)
- divbzero 3y agoWhat was your role in the trial? Was there anything from your experience that stood out as particularly surprising or interesting?
- AlbertCory 3y agospectator. I added a top-level comment about this.
- johndhi 3y agoAttorney for Samsung. My main recollection was that the opening statements from the lead Samsung attorney weren't that charismatic or convincing to me. I was surprised it just wasn't that... Good. Years later I suspect the strategy of Samsung (which certainly worked, if it was the approach) was to build a good case for appeal, rather than to focus on winning the trial itself. As it turned out, apple won the trial but Samsung won the appeals.
- foolfoolz 3y agoa friend of my is a full time expert witness. he went to school for an engineering degree and did 1 year of industry work. he now provides expert testimony on technical cases all over the country. they fly him out to nice hotels with a generous per diem. he gets paid very well. they give him the materials to present in court. it’s a very well paying position
- l33t233372 3y ago850 in 2016 dollars is almost 1100 in 2023 dollars.
- Zigurd 3y agoIt's not a "crazy worry" but defendants in civil suits have all kinds of worries. Regarding impugning Stanford researchers (N.b. no scare quotes) as being motivated by a consulting fee, that's what those fees are for: to get the best possible expert witnesses. I don't begrudge a good defense attempting to block a litigant's experts, either. However, everyone is better off for expert witnesses being motivated by fees to provide the best expert testimony. If there was something untoward about their motivation, it would be Stanford's problem.
- anon84873628 3y agoIs there a reason not to take TFA at it's word, which says that the litigation in progress (for which expert testimony was requested) does not relate to the research those experts were conducting through agreements signed with CDE? The whole problem here is that as a soon as a researcher signs the contract, they are barred from participating in any litigation against the department even if it doesn't involve the private data they were working with. So you have a large population of experts removed from the pool, because all the experts are likely to be involved in some type of research.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ChurchillsLlama 3y agoThe main point of the article is that the CDE is preventing those who partner with them from testifying about anything, even what's unrelated to the data CDE provides - 'Viewpoint discrimination'. > That begs the question: Did the research lead to the desire to be an expert witness? Or did the desire to be an expert witness define the nature of the research project? I don't think these questions are productive. You can't truly know why someone does what they do. And making the suggestion that the researchers tainted their research because of the money is purely speculative and unfair.