EXCESS,
SURPLUS LINES AND REINSURANCE
(ESLR)
Nothing But Net
By: Larry
P. Schiffer
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Insurance and reinsurance litigation and arbitration often requires the use of experts.
Many firms maintain their own expert witness bank and others rely on personal contacts and
client recommendations. Expert directories and organizations that provide experts to
attorneys have existed for many years. Now, the Internet has opened up the ability to
locate and contact expert witnesses and consultants quickly and easily from your desktop.
There are quite a few directories on the Internet claiming to provide access to expert
witnesses. We have not reviewed them all and do not endorse any particular site. Like any
other directory or site on the Internet, you must use caution in relying on any
information provided.
There are three good starting points if you are looking for an expert witness. FindLaw,
the comprehensive legal search site; Hieros Gamos, the expansive legal information site;
and Yahoo, one of the Internet's most popular search directories. FindLaw as a link to a
subpage called Consultants and Experts (www.findlaw.com/13experts/index.html).
This subpage contains a wide variety of links to directories and expert services,
including ADR and litigation support. Hieros Gamos has a link to its Expert Testimony
Directory (www.hg.org/expert_serv.html).
This directory provides links to a wide variety of experts. Yahoo has a very broad expert
search area under its business and consulting listings (www.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Law/Consulting).
Some other expert witness sites are: The Internet Directory of Expert Witnesses (www.expertwitness.com), which has an easy to use
site, but a small number of listings under its categories; The National Registry of
Experts (www.expert.registry.com); TASA ,
which only has representative samples from its print directory; the Expert Witness Network
(www.witness.net/default.asp), which
requires registration; The National Directory of Expert Witnesses (www.claims.com/online.html), which appears to
focus on insurance claims; ExpertLaw.com (www.expertlaw.com),
which has a broad range of experts from bankruptcy to medical; and Consolidated
Consultants Co., which has its Forensic Expert Witness site (www.FreeReferral.com) covering medical and
technical experts. DRI has an expert witness bank, but it is fee-based and limited to its
members (www.driewb.org).
Beyond using directories, searching for a subject matter or person using search engines is
always a good way to turn up information on who is publishing or speaking on a particular
topic. For medical experts, nearly every speciality has a page or two that provides links
to medical departments at major medical institutions. Those institutions often provide an
attending list by speciality, which provides access to potential untapped specialists. For
example, if you are looking for an opthalmologist to review a file for a particular
disease, a quick search using any Internet search engine will turn up more than one
opthalmology page with links to the opthalmology departments at all the major teaching
hospitals.
The Internet continues to provide attorneys and all users access to vast amounts of
information. Expert information is just one small area that is readily available by
logging on and searching. Please let us know if you have any interesting web sites that
you recommend or whether there are any topics you would like to see discussed in future
columns.
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