As the Supreme Court has noted, “expert evidence can be both powerful and quite misleading because of the difficulty in evaluating it.” Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 595 (1993). “Indeed, no other kind of witness is free to opine about a complicated matter without any firsthand knowledge of the facts in the case, and based upon otherwise inadmissible hearsay[.]” United States v. Frazier, 387 F.3d 1244, 1260 (11th Cir. 2004).

Harnessing expert testimony to make it “powerful” rather than “misleading” requires a thorough understanding of the procedural and evidentiary foundations for its use at trial, and an appreciation for how modern jurors either accept or reject that testimony in the courtroom.

This CLE will cover preparing your expert witness for trial and cross-examination, qualifying a witness as an expert under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and its analogous state counterparts, laying the foundation for the expert’s conclusions, eliciting opinion testimony in an understandable manner, and using experts to teach the jury, even if they will not opine on an ultimate issue at trial.