Apart from lawyers in firms that handle patent or intellectual property cases, few attorneys studied engineering as their undergraduate major. However, many firms litigate product liability and personal injury suits in which engineering knowledge is vital to aid in the investigation or an engineer is needed as an expert witness. When is the engineer’s input most input effectively used? It’s my opinion that the earlier this occurs the better – for the economic interest of both the law firm and their client.

Often the retained engineer brought in early on a potential case can be most valuable by reviewing the technical merits and weak aspects of both sides of the case. From this review he or she can then give recommendations for an effective plan of investigation and its implementation. This may include identifying specific kinds of experts that will be required, the types of inspections and/or tests that are indicated and advising on how the resulting gathered information can most effectively be represented in depositions or at trial. The engineer can be useful by contributing to the determination of the total cost of the investigative plan. He or she can start on the first stages of the investigation and provide initial conclusions that are either supportive or not of the client’s case. From this information along with an overall assessment of the likely overall cost, the law firm can make fully informed decisions on designating the engineer as an expert (or not) that did the initial work and in recommending to its client that he proceed with the suit or pursue a settlement without further expenditures.

Many law firms that litigate medical malpractice cases employ a registered nurse as a full-time staff member or part time on an as-needed basis to provide early and continuing advice in a similar fashion to an engineering investigation described. If a law firm does a significant amount of personal injury or product liability work that often involves various manufactured or engineered components, it can be very cost effective to contract with a competent generalist engineer on an as-needed basis for these early-in-the-case functions. If that engineer does nothing else he or she might be very valuable in recommending the specific type of engineer or scientific expert that could best serve the client’s interest for the specific technical questions at issue in a case. To be most useful in this role the engineer retained needs a range of knowledge in different technical areas and, ideally, will have diverse industrial experience. It is my opinion that an individual educated as a mechanical engineer or as a chemical engineer would be best in this function because these two disciplines come closest to preparing the generalist engineer.

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