When it comes to expert witness work there are no geographic limitations. I’ll use my own experience as an example.  100+ cases and only two in Georgia where I work. My caseload is very heavy in Texas, Florida, the Northeast and California.

It’s actually very easy to control the costs of expert witnesses even if you have an out of state expert. For example, almost all of my depositions are done via video or teleconference. I did one on Skype last year. Point being, depositions don’t have to include travel costs. And since most of the cases in my industry, consumer credit, settle before trial there is rarely a need for airfare and hotel expenses.

If you flip the equation and ask yourself…would you take a client who may want you to fly from out of state for a deposition or trial? For me that’s a no-brainer, you have to go where the business is. And most of the lawyers who have hired me recognize that finding the right expert isn’t a matter of geography, it’s a matter of who is going to help their case the most.

Credit Expert, John Ulzheimer, is the President of Consumer Education at SmartCredit.com, the credit blogger for Mint.com, and a Contributor for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.  He is an expert on credit reporting, credit scoring and identity theft. Formerly of FICO, Equifax and Credit.com, John is the only recognized credit expert who actually comes from the credit industry.  John has served as an expert in over 100 cases, serving Plaintiff’s and defendants.

1. There is no single generally recognized method for determining credit damages. Different experts do it different ways. In fact, some experts won’t put numbers to credit damages, likely because there are no damages or they’re not confident of their methods.  There is no “miles per hour” or “feet per second” type standards to credit damages. This certainly does not mean that credit damage can’t be quantified.

2. The 3 most common methods I’ve seen are the dollar for dollar method, where the expert attempts to award a Plaintiff with a dollar amount equal to an amount of money not lent because of credit reporting issues.  For example, if someone has been denied a $25,000 car loan, they’d consider that to be $25,000 of damages. The second is the dollar for dollar plus tax liability method. This is the same as the first method except the tax liability is included in the damage assessment. The final method takes a percentage of the dollar for dollar calculation.  For example, if someone has been denied a $25,000 car loan due to credit report errors then the expert would take 10 or 15% of that amount and call it the damage amount.

3. Credit damages and economic damages are not the same thing. Simply having a lower credit score due to allegedly incorrect credit reporting isn’t a economic damage. There is no study or industry standard that assigns a dollar amount to a lower credit score, no “dollar per point” method. Economic damages would stem from cause, effect and subsequent effect. For example, incorrect credit reporting has the effect of a lower credit score and that lower score effectively caused some sort of economic damages.

John Ulzheimer is a nationally recognized expert on credit reporting, credit scoring and credit damages.  He is a 20+ year veteran of the consumer credit industry including time with Equifax and FICO. He has been an expert witness in over 100+ credit related cases serving both Plaintiffs and Defendants. He is twice FCRA certified by the Consumer Data Industry Association. John has been qualified to testify at trial in both state and Federal courts.

I’ve also noticed a trend amongst these credit expert witnesses, which is that all of them, save me, do most of their work representing plaintiffs.  This is likely related to the lack of experience working for the industry.  Point being, we’re all credit active consumers…but not many of us are credit industry veterans.

So the question that attorneys and pro se litigants have to wrestle with is this…am I better off with a plaintiff’s only credit expert witness or am I better off with someone who has a more balanced case distribution and who actually comes from the credit industry?  The answer, while seemingly obvious, is anything but.

In my ~100 cases I’ve realized that some lawyers would rather have the novice credit expert witness, one that perhaps has no experience at all in the credit industry.  I say this with a certain degree of certainty as I’ve been opposed by people in the credit repair industry, real estate agents, auto salesmen, and even an electronics salesman who worked at a big box electronics retailer.  None of these professions is really specific to consumer credit, other than credit repair.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve had attorneys who’ve hired me and it was very clear that they wanted someone who had experience under their belt.  And, I’ve had some who’ve told me that unless I had trial experience they would have looked elsewhere.  This seems to be more of the norm when the attorney is representing an industry player like a bank, collection agency, debt buyer, or a credit reporting agency.

Credit Expert Witness, John Ulzheimer, is the President of Consumer Education at SmartCredit.com, the credit blogger for Mint.com, and a Contributor for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.  He is an FCRA certified expert on credit reporting, credit scoring and identity theft. Formerly of FICO, Equifax and Credit.com, John is the only recognized credit expert who actually comes from the credit industry.

It’s uncommon but there’s always the difficult credit damage expert client.  Not a client who bothers you excessively, but a client who can’t seem to find his or her checkbook.  Don’t get me wrong, I am the most flexible “vendor” in the world but eventually you have to draw a line in the sand and cut your client loose for non-payment.

We’d all love to always have a fully secured workload but charging a high enough retainer, but that just isn’t realistic (unless you want to push clients away).  And we can send emails until the cows come home asking for payment but if someone isn’t going to pay their bills then, well, they’re just not going to pay their bills.

The following phrase appears in every single one of my retainer agreements for the credit expert witness work I do.. “If any charge or amount provided for herein is not paid or advanced within thirty (30) days from date of invoice or demand, a late charge equal to 1.5% per month of the delinquency shall accrue and shall entitle Company, at its option, to immediately terminate this Agreement or suspend the rendition of services thereunder.”

Basically that sentence allows me to cancel my agreement if the outstanding amount becomes too high, in my mind.  I’ve even started charging pro se plaintiffs twice the retainer that I’d charge a law firm.  Why?  I do that because you can’t file a complaint with the state bar association on a consumer…but you can on a delinquent law firm.

I try to be incredibly flexible with past due clients.  I offer payment plans, early application of retainer, and anything else that’s reasonable.  What I will NOT do is settle for a lesser amount.  That just isn’t going to happen.

I ask for net 30 terms and the most I’ll let a client go is 30 days past due before they get a friendly reminder email about their invoice.  The most a client has ever gone without paying me is 12 months.  I’ve had pro se clients file bankruptcy and I just simply wrote off their bills as non-collectable.

At the end of the day you’re your own business so you have to make up your own mind regarding what you’ll accept as far as delinquency.  But, as a credit guy I can tell you that the longer the bill goes unpaid the less likely it is to eventually be paid.

]]> http://creditexpertwitness.com/2011/10/when-do-i-cancel-my-agreement-for-non-payment-of-expert-witness-fees/feed/ 0 http://creditexpertwitness.com/2011/10/what-if-i-dont-want-to-take-a-case-as-an-expert-witness/ http://creditexpertwitness.com/2011/10/what-if-i-dont-want-to-take-a-case-as-an-expert-witness/#comments Sat, 01 Oct 2011 01:24:18 +0000 John Ulzheimer http://creditexpertwitness.expertwitnessgroup.com/?p=262 What If I Don’t Want to Take a Case as an Expert Witness?

Professional expert witnesses won’t publicly admit it, but they’re all hourly employees to some extent.  If they don’t work, they don’t get paid.  So the dilemma we face when we’re presented with potential “business” that we don’t really want is hard to deal with.  What do we do when we’re pitched on a case that we really don’t want?

First things first, I’m a firm believer that EVERYONE deserves a world class expert witness, regardless of who they are or what they supposedly did.  In my business I’m often faced with potentially taking credit damage expert cases against mega-banks, huge collection agencies, huge debt buyers and the big credit reporting agencies.  I’ve been told, off the record of course, that I were to take cases against certain companies that I would permanently burn the bridge with that company and would never be hired by them in the future for other credit expert witness work.

I know this is true given I’ve taken cases against all three of the national credit reporting agencies, who are sued almost constantly, yet haven’t been hired by any of them for over 5 years for expert witness work.  Seems like when their feeling are hurt they hold a grudge.  This hasn’t been true for banks and collection agencies.  I’ve taken cases against certain banks and collectors and have been subsequently hired by them later down the road for future cases.

An expert witness is a one man company and one many companies have to be cognizant of the business side of the equation, more so than larger organizations.  If taking one case against John’s Bank takes you off their list of potential experts in the future then you have to consider whether a fast nickel or a slow dime is your preference.

If you don’t want to take a case against a potential future corporate client then don’t take it.  I’ve turned down cases simply because I don’t want to burn a bridge that perhaps hasn’t even been built yet.  It’s not hard in my industry, consumer credit, to see who is and who isn’t being sued under the various consumer protection statutes.  I look at that list as a list of potential expert witness prospects.

There’s nothing wrong with referring the business to another expert.  And, there’s nothing wrong with turning down work because you don’t agree with the argument you’re being asked to support.  I do it all the time.  In fact, I’ve told prospective credit damage expert clients that my fees are going to far outweigh any damages their clients have suffered.  Honesty is the best policy and if they just don’t have any damages then…they don’t have any damages.

This isn’t a “conflicts” thing…it’s a business decision.  I often see novice credit damage expert witnesses so desperate for their first case that they’ll take on a horrible case, with a really bad attorney, at an outrageously unfair hourly rate, just to get a case under their belt.  Let me tell you, there’s nothing beneficial about getting your tail kicked and possibly being disqualified just to make a few bucks and get a case on your list.  Quality outweighs quantity and if you have to turn down business for the sake of maintaining your reputation then it’s my advice that you do so.

How many of you credit expert witnesses have struggled with the exercise of trying to find suitable documentation memorializing your client’s (or the adverse party’s) FICO scores?  Unless you have reports from the myFICO website or tri-merge credit reports provided for a mortgage loan application, FICO scores are hard to find.  And, what makes matters worse is the slew of websites that sell or give away non-FICO scores as part of their product offerings.

And while each of the three credit reporting agencies can recreate historical credit reports (also called archive credit reports) none of them can recreate archive FICO scores.  That leaves most of you non-FICO veterans “up a creek” when it comes to talking about the impact to FICO scores of allegedly incorrect credit reporting.  Well, help is on the way…in fact it’s already here.

The new Wall Street reform law, commonly called Dodd-Frank, requires that lenders who decline or adversely approve a consumer based on their credit score must now disclose that credit score along with the adverse action or score disclosure communications.  And because adverse action letters are a common part of our discovery needs when we’re performing credit expert witness or credit damage assessments, this helps to fill the need, which before July of 2011 didn’t exist outside of the mortgage environment (mandatory credit score disclosure).

Let’s be clear.  This isn’t going to help credit expert witnesses in their credit damage reports and it’s certainly not going to make you a better expert witness credit damage professional.  But, what it will do is to assist with your efforts to testify about WHAT the Plaintiff’s FICO score was at the time of the adverse treatment.  It will also help credit expert witnesses like me who spend about half of their time as a credit expert witness for the defense.