Knowing how to prepare yourself as an expert witness for a deposition or a jury trial is very important. An expert witness is sometimes all that stands between a hefty settlement that can benefit you and a trial that can send your client to jail. Therefore, it is best that you learn how to make the most of your testimony to get the results you want. Read on to find out the dos and don’ts of preparing yourself as an expert witness.
Tailoring The Body Language
While it is legal to tamper with a witness, sometimes the testimony needs to be fine-tuned to bring its true merits to light in front of a jury. This includes prepping yourself to be the kind of expert witness that demonstrates the right body language in front of the jury and ascertaining that you don’t come off as defensive during cross-examination, etc. It’s not enough that you are giving a solid factual testimony as an expert witness; what truly matters is that the jury likes you and considers your testimony credible.
Learn To Take Feedback
During the preparation for giving testimony, you are likely to hit some roadblocks with the attorney who is preparing you. Learn to take the feedback seriously, and do not take it personally either. While there may be disagreements around the testimony or its delivery keep in mind that you and the lawyer are on the same side and want the same results. Besides, your lawyer is only helping you do your job better by pointing out what you can improve in your testimony to make it more legitimate.
Keep The Testimony Concise and Crisp
As an expert witness, your job is to deliver a certain piece of information. You don’t have to build the entire story for your attorney or even for the jury’s sake. In most cases, the jury has already received enough information about the case through other witnesses. It means that you would be boring them with the facts they know already if you keep rambling on, which will likely distract them from paying attention to your testimony at all. Consider keeping it compact and crisp, and only read out your part of the book to get your job done.
Explain It To A Layperson
You can’t expect the jury to understand your tech talk while you try to prove why the defendant in the cryptocurrency fraud case is, in fact, a fraud. Your job is to make the jury understand why you’re giving the opinion you’re giving, and that includes giving out information in layperson terms that are easy to understand and grasp for people from all walks of life.
Mock Trials Are Vital
It would be unwise to ignore the importance of a mock trial. Mock trials can help prepare you better for a real trial because not only will you get a chance to give your testimony, study its impact with the attorney, and improve it, but you will also be cross-examined, and that can prepare you for the strategies for probing expert witnesses that the opposing counsels can use on you. In essence, a mock trial can indicate how prepared you are to take on a jury and an opposing counsel.
Speak With Integrity
While your role as an expert witness is to make the case of an attorney for them, you can only do it while remaining neutral and within the bounds of the law. The one thing that can set the jury against you is being defensive or, worse, being evasive. Make sure that you’re directly answering a question that is being asked. Try not to be evasive, and if you don’t know the answer to a question, simply say, “I don’t know.” It is perfectly alright not to answer a question if you don’t have an answer.
Make A Statement
Your testimony should always have a general statement that gives the gist of all you have to see in a couple of lines. Frame it in such a manner that you get it out as soon as you take the stand. The statement is supposed to serve as a hook and lock in the attention of the jury so they know what you’re going to explain but not how; that will keep their attention focused on the testimony, and they would pay better attention.
Conclusion
Being an expert witness can be tricky; an accused’s life can be on the line when you’re doing this job, and it might just hinge on your words, so you should prepare well before you take the stand. If you keep the above-explained points in mind, you can ace every testimony you will ever give.