Most attorneys have a checklist they run through when interviewing a potential expert witness.
Credentials. Board certification. Practice history. Publications. Hourly rate. Availability. Prior testimony.
It’s a sound list. It tells you whether the expert is qualified to be in the conversation. What it doesn’t tell you is whether they’ll hold up under cross-examination — and that’s the only test that actually matters once the case is in motion.
After two decades of placing experts, we’ve come to rely on three questions that reveal more about an expert’s value to a case than the entire standard intake checklist combined. They take five minutes. Most attorneys don’t ask them. Here’s what they reveal — and why.
Question 1: “Walk me through how you’d analyze this case.”
The point of this question isn’t to get the expert’s opinion. It’s to find out whether they have a methodology — or just an instinct dressed up in credentials.
A qualified expert should be able to describe a defensible analytical path: I’d start by reviewing the records for X, then assess against current clinical standards for Y, then evaluate causation by Z. The framework should be specific to their field and grounded in how their discipline actually evaluates cases like this one.
An expert who answers with “I’d say the standard of care was breached” or “I think there’s a strong causation argument” is offering you a conclusion. Conclusions don’t survive Daubert hearings. Methodologies do.
The most useful experts will sometimes say I can’t fully answer that until I see the records, but here’s the framework I’d apply. That’s the right answer. It tells you they think analytically, not advocacy-first.
Question 2: “When were you last seriously challenged on this — and how did it go?”
This question is uncomfortable. That’s why it works.
Experts who tell you they’ve never been seriously challenged are either too junior to have been tested or aren’t being fully honest. Every working expert has had a hard cross-examination. The question is whether they can describe it with clarity and humility, or whether they deflect.
What you’re listening for:
- Specificity. A real answer references a particular case, a particular line of questioning, what opposing counsel was trying to get at, and how the expert handled it. A polished evasion stays vague.
- What they learned. Strong experts can articulate something they refined about their analysis or their testimony after being challenged. That’s the mark of a clinician who treats expert work as a discipline, not a side income.
- Composure under retelling. If they get defensive describing a past challenge, they will get defensive in your deposition. Watch the tone, not just the content.
This question isn’t about catching the expert in something. It’s about finding out whether they’ve been forged in the kind of fire your case is heading into.
Question 3: “What would make you decline this case?”
This is the question almost no one asks. It’s also the one that reveals more about an expert’s integrity — and their usefulness to you — than the other two combined.
An expert who can articulate the limits of their opinion is an expert whose opinion you can rely on. Specifically:
- I wouldn’t take this if the timeline showed X.
- I’d decline if the records didn’t include Y.
- If the patient’s history reflected Z, I couldn’t credibly support the standard-of-care argument.
These answers tell you the expert has a framework for evaluating cases on the merits — not on whether the retaining attorney is offering work. That framework is what protects you from finding out, halfway through deposition, that opposing counsel can walk your expert into a corner you didn’t see coming.
The experts who answer this question crisply are the ones whose testimony holds. The experts who can’t answer it — or who answer with “I’d take any case where the medicine supports it” — are the ones who’ll get walked into the limits they couldn’t articulate.
Why most attorneys don’t ask these questions
The honest answer is that most intake calls are run by associates working from a template, or by senior attorneys under time pressure to retain someone and move on. These three questions take effort to ask well. They require the attorney to listen carefully and judge the quality of the answer, not just check whether an answer was given.
But the cost of skipping them shows up later — at the deposition, at the Daubert hearing, or in the settlement number that didn’t quite get where it should have.
The expert you retain is the expert who shapes how the jury hears your case. Five minutes of good questions at intake is the cheapest insurance available in litigation.
How we approach this
We ask these three questions before we ever send an expert. Every match. Every time. It’s the work most expert witness firms skip — and the reason attorneys who care about deposition outcomes call us.
Mednick Associates places board-certified medical experts for attorneys handling medical malpractice, VA disability, cybersecurity, and employment law cases. Every match is screened by a registered nurse with clinical experience in the relevant field. Request an expert →