The 3 Hidden Pain Points of Expert Witness Research

Hiring an expert witness should feel like a strategic task. But too often, it feels like a scramble. On paper, expert research looks simple: identify someone with the right credentials, review their prior testimony, confirm availability, and move on. But anyone who has actually done this work—under deadline, budget pressure, and the scrutiny of demanding clients—knows the truth.

The biggest pain points in expert research aren’t visible on a CV. The biggest pain points are structural. And they compound over time. They’re buried in the disconnected systems, unstructured institutional knowledge, and unreliable habits.

1. Disconnected Systems & Siloed Data

Most firms don’t have an expert research problem. They have a siloed data problem. Data lives scattered among:

• Docket data systems
• Expert witness databases
• Emails
• Old memos
• An attorney’s memory

There is no single source of truth for how an expert actually performed, the context of the matters they worked on, or whether they’ve been overused or repeatedly challenged. Every new matter requires stitching together partial, inconsistent views of reality, not because the information doesn’t exist, but because it isn’t connected.

The result is inefficiency at best, and risk at worst. Firms waste hours recreating work they’ve already done, while missing critical insights that could influence strategy, credibility, or cost.

2. Tacit Knowledge & Memory Reliance

A surprising amount of expert selection still relies on phrases like, “I used someone like this five years ago.” This is tacit knowledge at work—valuable, but fragile. Some of the most important intelligence about experts includes things you won’t find in any database:

• Were they responsive?
• Did they collaborate well with counsel?
• How did they handle cross-examination?
• Did they hold up under pressure?

Knowledge management is a critical part of the expert witness research lifecycle, but it’s difficult to sustain without a reliable single-source-of-truth. This information lives in people’s heads, buried in inboxes, or trapped in DMS folders—documents no one remembers to check. And when people leave the firm, that knowledge walks out the door with them.

In fact, a 2025 study highlighted that lack of knowledge sharing within the firm is one of the greatest obstacles to efficient expert research. When expert experience isn’t documented, curated, and made easily accessible, it becomes functionally irrelevant. The result is, once again, the constant feeling of starting from scratch, even when the firm has years of relevant experience.

3. Niche Expertise: Finding the Right Expert (Not Just an Expert)

There’s a meaningful difference between “qualified” and “fit.” Needs are as hyper-specific as:

• A particular regulatory regime
• A precise time period
• A specific product generation
• A niche methodology that applies only in narrow circumstances

Traditional search methods, like Google, public databases, and referrals, tend to return results that are too broad, generic, or disconnected from the actual facts of the case. So firms fall back on personal networks: familiar names, or experts who have worked before. This creates two predictable risks: (1) blind spots to better-fit experts, and (2) overuse of the same experts, resulting in predictability to opposing counsel.

This is how firms end up with experts who look great on paper but struggle in practice. Which is demonstrated by the fact that an overwhelming 99% of law firms have been surprised or unprepared by an expert witness.

The Real Issue: How the Market Still Operates

Despite advances in legal technology and a growing array of research tools, expert research still largely runs on:

• Siloed data
• Reliance on memory over structured intelligence
• Generalized referrals over niche fits

This ad hoc approach can feel efficient, and sometimes it is, but it breaks down under scale. It doesn’t survive staff turnover. It makes risk harder to see, not easier to manage. “Good enough” expert research is quietly expensive. It costs time, consistency, and credibility—the very factors that contribute to a law firm’s reputation.

A More Durable Way Forward

The future of expert research isn’t about replacing judgment or outweighing personal experience with sterile data points. It’s about supporting them. When private internal experience is combined with verified external data, enabling institutional knowledge to truly become institutionalized, firms stop guessing and start deciding. Your firm’s experience and network become strategic leverage in hiring an expert, not the default workaround in a broken workflow.

The CI People Directory gives firms a pre-built and maintained single- source-of-truth for over 500,000 expert witnesses—eliminating fragmented data, fading institutional memory, and reliance on the same familiar names. By connecting external records with a firm’s own experience, it delivers fast, defensible expert selection grounded in real performance and real context, helping teams reduce hidden risks and make decisions that hold up under pressure.

To learn more about how CI can transform your expert intelligence and research, contact sales@courtroominsight.com.