Selecting the right expert with Solomonic

Choosing the right expert can make or break your case in a dispute. In litigation, many risks can arise, and an issue with an expert and their evidence can quickly see the party’s prospects for success tumble.  As such, the process of expert selection warrants care and attention. 

This was very much in the mind of solicitor Michael Polonsky, and his firm Stonehage Fleming, when a thorny dispute they were instructed on required the evidence of a forensic company valuation expert.

Traditionally, expert selection has been based on either a litigator’s direct experience, or on employing their network of colleagues and contacts to identify a reliable and relevant individual. While this may be very effective, it does not always yield the optimal results and can be rather subjective. In addition, recommending the expert to the client, without much context, can be challenging.

In this case, the firm’s network yielded six individuals. Polonsky wanted to whittle this group down and turned to data from Solomonic.

Solomonic approaches expert evidence from a data perspective. Through careful analysis of thousands of published judgments, Solomonic extracts judicial praise and criticism of experts and then organises this by subject area, expert and theme. Users can then see how much experience an expert may have, review experts in a particular area, or see how different judges approach experts and their evidence.

On consulting Solomonic data, Polonsky found that the six individuals had somewhat limited time in a courtroom. However, he found 19 individuals with meaningful experience, each of whom he was then able to review. At the end of that review, he had four candidates – none of whom were from the original list, and all of whom had meaningful experience and had been praised by judges.

Polonsky took the analysis to his client and the response was very positive. He stated, “The director to whom I reported found my analysis extremely useful, and that is down to digging into the data Solomonic provided.”

Polonsky now has a stronger foundation for his shortlist and the support of the client in selecting the right expert.

He concluded, “Expert selection is vital to our client’s case and using Solomonic’s data means we can take additional steps to identify the right professional partner and reduce the risks of the selection process. I now consider Solomonic’s data indispensable when making future expert selection decisions.”

Michael Polonsky is an experienced solicitor, former partner at Berwin Leighton Paisner, and consultant to investment firm Stonehage Fleming. Stonehage Fleming advises many of the world’s leading families and wealth creators and advises on, administers and manages over $150bn of their assets.