Engaging with Biochemist and Health Physicist Expert, Dr. David Stephens

In this episode…

Our guest, Dr. David Stephens, is a biochemist, health physicist, and environmental and forensic consultant. He has worked with the Health Department on numerous matters, including radioactive materials licensing, and he has served as an expert on cases ranging from clandestine drug lab analysis to environmental risk factors. Dr. Stephens holds a PhD in Biochemistry from UT Austin. 

Don’t start working until you have a signed contract, according to Dr. Stephens. It can be tempting to try and be overly helpful on initial calls and conversations, but it is important to get paid for any work you do in service of the end client. 

Check out the entire episode for our discussion on making it through slow periods, good communication, and staying current.

Transcript

Introduction to Dr. David Stevens

Speaker 1 0:01

This episode is brought to you by Roundtable Group the experts on experts. We've been connecting attorneys with experts for over 30 years. Find out more at roundtablegroupcom.

Speaker 2 0:14

Welcome to Engaging Experts. I'm your host, noah Balmer, and today I'm excited to welcome Dr David Stevens to the show. Now, dr Stevens is a biochemist, health physicist and environmental and forensic consultant. He has worked with the health department on numerous matters, including radioactive materials licensing, and he has served as an expert in cases ranging from clandestine drug lab analysis to environmental risk factors. Dr Stevens holds a PhD in biochemistry from UT Austin. Dr Stevens, thank you so much for joining me here today. Well, thank you, of course. Let's jump into it. So you've made a career as a biochemist. How did you first become involved in expert witnessing?

First Steps into Expert Witnessing

Speaker 3 0:59

Well, the first half of my life was academic. I was entirely in the college environment and that's when I was getting my degree. And after I finished that I was rather tired of sort of the ivory tower thing and I wanted to get into something that was more active in the world and environmental concerns were paramount in my mind. So I went looking for that and ended up getting involved with some attorneys over the years who put me on to doing expert witnessing and forensic consulting, and I really loved it so I've kept with it Sure.

Speaker 2 1:35

Well, tell me about those very first phone calls. Was it out of the blue? Was expert witnessing, even something that you had heard of?

Speaker 3 1:44

No, not really. I mean maybe watching court shows or something you see an occasional person brought on, but in real life I hadn't thought about it and I advertised in the Yellow Pages, which takes us back a ways. And a local attorney called me and asked me if I could do some work on some clandestine drug lab cases and I said, sure, I'd love to take a look at them. And that started a relationship between us that lasted about a year, a year and a half, where I looked at four cases. Unfortunately, in most of them I couldn't help his client at all because they had everything there they needed to do what they were supposedly doing. But I was able to give him a chemical analysis of that.

Speaker 2 2:28

How do you make that determination? When you get a call from an attorney and they need X, y and Z? How do you know that you are the right person, that your expertise is in that wheelhouse?

Speaker 3 2:40

Well, I mean, obviously the attorney has got to give you some information about what he's looking at, and usually they're limited on that because you have to sign a nondisclosure agreement before they can give you any certain specific information, experience in education, and say, yeah, I can do that. I have enough, you know, information and experience in that to be able to render him a useful opinion, is that something that's a billable occurrence?

Speaker 3 3:17

Well, like most people, I guess, I give an initial consultation for free, but after that we got to sign a contract. Because you know that's what you work for. Is your information Early on. I would get suckered into because I love to answer questions, and they'd ask you things on the phone and you'd answer it and then think to yourself, well, that was really going a little too far, I think. But you learn.

Speaker 2 3:43

Let's talk about those contracts a little bit. Are there any specific terms that you like to have in there? Either do you take a retainer or a project rate, maybe a travel fee. Are there any specific terms that you like to have in your contracts?

Speaker 3 3:59

Absolutely Pretty much all of the things you mentioned. Definitely a retainer, which is usually one eight-hour billable session. Travel, you know you can charge the IRS per mile rate for automobile travel and an hourly rate for travel time. Definitely you want to have in your contract something about arrangements where you're staying, how you're traveling, all of those things. I'm getting up in years and I can't really fly coach anymore. I've got to have more leg room.

Speaker 3 4:35

So those are the kinds of things you have to think about you know what all is going to be entailed if I'm actually called to court and have to travel to some other city and stay there for a while. You might want to get that down and riding.

Speaker 2 4:50

Sure. Is that a special rate, a travel rate, or is that just your regular rate, applied across the time of travel?

Speaker 3 4:59

No, I charge less for travel because I'm not actually. I'll probably be working on the case while I'm sitting there on the plane anyway, but I charge less for that let's talk expert witness reports.

Speaker 2 5:11

What are the sorts of things that you've been brought on to write about in your consulting work and your expert witness?

Speaker 3 5:19

work, really just the summaries of the case research that I did in each case. I did find one attorney the last case I worked, which was for a rather large law firm and a big case. He told me specifically not to keep any written records whatsoever because they could always be subpoenaed by the other side and brought into court. And I was like, well, hey, so I would just make little notes on scratch paper and tear them up or burn them or something, because you know and brought into court. And I was like, well, hey, so I would just make little notes on scratch paper and tear them up or burn them or something, cause you know, that was the only time I've ever encountered that.

Speaker 2 5:52

Sure, Sure, that's. That's a really interesting situation. I haven't heard I haven't heard of that happening too much before. So one of the things that you had mentioned prior to our call is that sometimes there is a bit of a gap between engagements. How do you prepare yourself for those sorts of eventualities? Do you have other work or are you primarily an expert witness?

Speaker 3 6:17

Well, actually I retired from the health department in 2019. So I have a retirement and Social Security, and when I don't have anything else going on, I basically just make do with that. I've got my lifestyle pretty much honed down to the bare necessities and I just get along until I get another job until I get another job, absolutely.

Expert Witness Reports and Challenges

Speaker 2 6:45

Are there any techniques that you use to try and get yourself out there, to try and get more engagements? Have you found luck with we had spoken a little bit about Roundtable Group. Have you found luck with expert witness referral agencies, or do you do any other sorts of advertising? I'm assuming that you're not still doing the yellow pages.

Speaker 3 7:01

No, I had to give up the yellow pages ad some years ago. It just didn't seem to be. I don't think anybody looks at it anymore, but I had a web page for a while and I didn't really get any hits on that. I've listed myself with a couple of other expert witness services, but actually Roundtable Group is the only one that has brought me any success, so I've stuck with them. I got one nibble from one of the other ones, but that didn't.

Speaker 3 7:31

In pretty much all of these cases, if you get a nibble and then something happens, they either settle or they drop the case. I had one where the guy just dropped the case for some reason. I guess he decided it wasn't worth pursuing. But you can't control any of those things. So you have to kind of keep a tight rein on your excitement that you're going to get one, because until you actually sign the contract you don't got one. You know, and you can do preliminary research, which I always do, because the minute they tell me about it I'm out looking at papers and stuff. But you know, you just you have to wait until that you have that contract in hand before you know anything's going on.

Speaker 2 8:14

Let's back up a little bit to those, to those initial phone calls are. It's a two way process? They're vetting you but you're also vetting them. What are the sorts of things that you think makes for a positive expert witness attorney relationship?

Speaker 3 8:30

Frequent and good communication. The last case I had we probably had a conference call every two or three days. I was brought in at the last minute on that one. He told me I was his out of the box guy, that he wanted to look at everything else. He had already had some experts in that had turned in some various reports. He had reports from the experts on the other side and he just wanted me to go over everything and see what I could find. And I found a number of interesting points. But a good relationship with your attorney, obviously being open and trying to fulfill what they're asking for and in some cases maybe helping them clarify what it is that they are wanting to find. Because you know, with an expert in a science a lot of times they kind of know what they want but you have to sharpen the request to the point where it's something you can answer. So those are important points to me.

Staying Current in Your Field

Speaker 2 9:28

Sure, sure. In such a technical field, how do you remain an expert? You know you're dealing with what I imagine is quite dynamic. How do you stay on top of things so that you still, you know, continue to get phone calls and can still consult or be an expert in a case that might deal with some new discovery or some new methodology?

Speaker 3 9:54

You just have to stay very dynamically aware of what's going on. You look at publications, you read things. There's been a recent trend in regulatory health physics. So regulation of radiation towards this thing called hormesis, which means basically a little bit is good for you. The standard policy has been what's called the linear no threshold theory, which means radiation is bad down to an infinitely small degree. The new regulatory posture that has been, you know, been looked at would say that well, down below a certain level we don't have to worry about it, and the thing there is that would save a lot of money for the people being regulated if they didn't have to ensure radiation, you know, shielding or whatever, below a certain point. That's been one trend. There's other things and you just have to keep on top of it. You know you go to different websites, different postings, you look at colleagues, you stay in touch with people and you know know, watch the trend.

Speaker 2 11:05

Do you find that any kind of trade events or or maintaining any kind of licensure is important in your field?

Speaker 3 11:14

oh, I used to have, uh, hazardous materials certification, but I let that last because I wasn't going to go out on any responses, probably anymore. In general, I haven't found that to be true, although you know other people might have other experiences.

Speaker 2 11:32

Have you ever been in a matter that has either changed the way that you go about doing something as an expert witness or reinforced something that you do as an expert witness?

Speaker 3 11:45

There's a tendency for, I guess, someone like me to perhaps over-elaborate when answering a question in court and you have to repeatedly remind yourself just answer the question and stop. Don't give them any more detail. That opens the door for them to, you know, pursue. In questioning you. I'm talking, of course, about cross-examination, and of course you drill extensively with the attorney before for cross-examination because you know the other side is really they have their ways and they're going to try to upset you or get inside somehow to get you to say something.

Speaker 2 12:23

Are there any specific preparation techniques that work for you? You mentioned things like mock cross-examination. Are there any other getting ready techniques that you think are really effective in a courtroom situation or even in a deposition? Just?

Courtroom Preparation and Ethics

Speaker 3 12:40

reviewing their claims and your information, the cross arguments of the case, making sure it's absolutely crystal in your mind, all of your supporting information and stuff. So if you're challenged, you're right there with well, no, this happened and this has been published and these people found this to be true and they are all very accredited. You know things like that. I mean you just have to be solid when you walk in there, because again there's going to be people trying to rattle you.

Speaker 2 13:13

So you you have been a biochemist a lot longer than you've been an expert witness. I imagine that you have, over the years, opined, written and put things down about what your opinions are. Do you ever worry about contradicting that at some point where you know, either during cross-examination or in a rebuttal expert witness report, that somebody says well you know, 30 years ago you said X, but now you're saying Y. How do you keep track of the opinions that you've made public over the years?

Speaker 3 13:48

I guess if someone was to come to me with a more recent piece of information, I would check that out and say, well, I guess I was wrong. In case of, you know, something happening that's changed the state of affairs in that particular subject, I don't really have a problem with that. I have an ethic, and you know, professional ethic, where I'm not going to say something that's not true either way, sure so, and I'll tell my client. No, I'm sorry, I can't say that because in my opinion that's not true and you're asking me to bend things a little too far.

Speaker 2 14:21

Along those lines. How should an expert witness go about giving bad news quote unquote bad news to their engaging attorney, something that they don't necessarily want to hear?

Final Advice and Conclusion

Speaker 3 14:35

No, I don't think you can embellish that or, you know, send flowers or anything. You're just basically going to have to be very straight up with it because they don't want to waste any more time than necessary. They're paying you a lot of money and if something comes back and says, I'm sorry, I can't, you know, it's like with the early drug cases I mentioned. In all but one case I was like no, this guy was making methamphetamine and you know, I don't think I can go to court and say he wasn't so sorry think I can go to court and say he wasn't so sorry.

Speaker 2 15:08

Naturally, Before we wrap up, do you have any last advice for expert witnesses, particularly newer expert witnesses or even attorneys that are working with expert witnesses?

Speaker 3 15:15

Other than what we've already discussed in terms of communication and being able to hang in there during the dry spells, because there will be dry spells. You're independently employed, you're a contract worker and all professions, I think, go through ups and downs, where it's real hot for a while and then it could be a dearth of it for a long time. I've thought maybe the pandemic cut into my business, among other factors. I don't know, maybe the political environment or something, but because I do work with environmental cases. So if the EPA or one of those other agencies has a change in regulation, that could affect things. And if you love it, as I do, I really got into it because I love puzzle solving and this is one of the best places for that. And this is, you know, this is one of the best places for that. Just hang in there and love it Absolutely sage advice, Dr Stevens.

Speaker 2 16:09

Thank you so much for joining me here today. Well, thank you for having me, of course, and thank you, as always, to our listeners for joining me for another episode of Engaging Experts.

Speaker 1 16:19

Thank you for listening to our podcast Engaging Experts. Our show notes are available on our website roundtablegroupcom.