Engaging Experts

Engaging with Business Valuation Expert, Mark Gottlieb

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A single magazine ad nudged a young CPA out of audit rooms and into the courtroom—and the lessons since have reshaped how we think about expert testimony. We sit down with Mark Gottlieb, practice leader at MSG and one of Forbes’ top CPAs for valuations, to explore how a forensic accountant turns complex financials into stories judges and juries can trust. From the first conflict check to the last exhibit tab, Mark shows why clarity and ethics are the expert’s real edge.

We unpack the two hats experts wear—consulting and testifying—and why many engagements start under privilege before moving into the spotlight. Mark walks through his preparation process, including drafting direct and cross outlines, building question sets for opposing experts, and sequencing facts so the trier of fact can follow the thread. He explains how standards of value (fair value vs fair market value) change state by state, what that means for valuation modeling, and how courtroom technology—from 80-inch displays to tight visual timelines—can sharpen your message without overcomplicating it.

Newer experts get a candid blueprint for depositions: answer only what’s asked, respect yes/no questions, and avoid volunteering context that can be twisted later. We also dive into practical workflow—initial document requests, follow-up discipline, shared channels, and maintaining momentum across dozens of active matters. Beneath the tactics is a human throughline: mentorship. Mark credits seasoned guides for helping him build a national practice and offers pointed advice for finding your own. If you work with experts, want to become one, or simply care about persuasive, ethical testimony, this conversation delivers tools you can use on your next case.

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

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Welcome to Engaging Experts. I'm your host, Noel Ballmer, and today I'm excited to welcome Mark Gottlieb to the show. Mr. Gottlieb is the practice leader at MSG, a business valuation and forensic accounting firm. He was named one of Forbes' top CPAs for valuations for 2025. He's an adjunct professor at the Fordham University School of Law and is an experienced litigation support professional. Mr. Gottlieb holds a master's in taxation from Long Island University. Mr. Gottlieb, thank you so much for joining me here today on Engaging Experts. Thank you. I appreciate the invitation. Absolutely. Let's jump into it. So you have a background in auditing going back to the late 70s. How did you first become involved in expert witnessing? So, like many college students that majoring in accounting, uh, the dream was to go at that time to a big eight accounting firm. Um, and I was lucky enough to get a job right at a college at uh Cooper's and Librand, which is now called Price Warehouse Cooper's. Uh, after a couple of years, I made a lateral move to a firm called Ernst and Winnie, which was also a big A firm. It's now called Ernst and Young. Ernst and Young, yeah. And I and I I often kid when I lecture um and teach that uh I wanted them to change the name of the firm to Ernst Winnie and Gottlieb, but there wasn't enough space on the side of the building in Times Square where they moved to. So I the I I left and I let them change the name to Ernst ⁇ Young. But all quickly aside, you know, I I have a strong background in auditing. And in my I guess my late 20s, um, I decided that I wanted to have my own firm. And I went on my own and I started to do audits for co-ops and condos, and I taught myself how to do a tax return because when you're an auditor in a big firm, you don't do any taxes. Your expertise is auditing, financial statement presentation, things of that nature. And um, after a year, year and a half of doing that, I I got terribly bored. And I was looking at a magazine, believe it or not, that specialized in marketing for CPAs. And in the back of the magazine, they had what they called tombstone ads that you could lease or rent for your neighborhood. So if you wanted to put an ad for accounting services or tax services, you would buy this ad and pay them a fee, and you can use that ad in your neighborhood. Strangely enough, the ad that they had um shown in the back of the magazine was a very stereotypical cartoon character of an accountant. And the accountant had a visor on his head and his sleeves were rolled up, he had a pencil holder in his pocket, and he was holding a phone, and the caption was Ask me why 200 lawyers call me each year. And I had an epiphany. The epiphany was why don't I do accounting for lawyers to help them with their court cases? Certainly, it's a lot more interesting than doing bookkeeping and tax prep work for small businesses or even doing co-op and condo audits. Uh my wife uh was a lawyer at the time, and uh my father-in-law was a lawyer. And um, you know, I always found the legal profession interesting, but I was an accountant. I was a CPA at the time. I had a master's degree in tax. Um I only went to go to get my master's degree because I had to somehow learn how to do a tax return. I thought that would help me. It actually didn't, but that's another story for another time. But but that ad that I saw in the back of the magazine was the turning point for my career. And I realized that I wanted to do that type of work, and that's what I started to try to do. I I started approaching lawyers, I started to advertise in a very minimal and and um and uh um unsophisticated way. I didn't really know what type of services, to be honest with you, that I could provide a lawyer, but I knew that lawyers became lawyers because they couldn't add. And they couldn't, they didn't like math, and they and they and they needed someone to to to do that work for them. And and in essence, if we were sitting at a coffee shop now, Noah, and you asked me, you know, you know, Mark, what do you do for a living? You know, my first instinct would to repeat all the initials after my name with all the designations and business valuation and tax and forensic accounting, yada, yada, yada. But in essence, what I do now is I'm in the financial literacy business. And my my client base are attorneys, and what I do is I help attorneys get through the financial maze of their court cases. Aaron Powell Attorney calls you. Maybe one of the representatives gets a hold of you. What are the sorts of questions they ask to make sure that A, you're the right expert for the job, but what are the sorts of things also that you ask them to see if this is an engagement that you're actually interested in taking? Well, the first thing I have to do is I have to do what's called a conflict check, because it's not uncommon that we get calls from both sides of the fence. So I ask them to give me the name of the manor, the captioning of the case, what courthouse or what state the um matter is being um held in. You know, we do work now, you know, our office is in Rockefeller Center in New York City, but we do work all around the country. And so I do the conflict check, and if there's no initial conflict check, I ask them to send me the complaint and the answer. And I tell them, don't tell me which side you're on. And I read the complaint and I read the answer and I call them back and I say, okay, I now understand what is the issue of the case. Is it a matrimonial matter? It is, is it an economic damage matter? Is it a partner dispute? Is it an earnout dispute? Is it a shareholder partnership issue? I now don't, I now understand what it is, and I say, okay, who are you in this in this play? And we go from there. And they tell me what they're what they're looking for for help on. Uh generally, they're looking for one or two types of experts. There's what's called a consulting expert and a testifying expert. So a consulting expert is one that sits behind the stage and is the orchestra leader with all the financial information. And whether it be discovery issues or be presentation issues or interpretation issues, but the job of the consultant is not necessarily to issue report and testify. The other type of instance that we're hired as is as right away is as an expert, test testifying expert, in which we will issue a report and we'll get in the box next to the judge or the jury, and we'll do a show and we'll express our professional opinion. Very, very often, probably more often than not, we're initially retained as a consulting expert. And then we transfer our role to the testifying expert. And the reason we do that, obviously, you know, you're you're an attorney, um, but I won't hold it against you, Noah. Um, but you know, you know that when you're a consultant and you're hired under the umbrella of the law firm, everything you touch, smell, feel, and see is protected under attorney client privilege. And so in that regard, if there's something that we see that we don't like, they can fire us. And in my 35 years of practice, I'm doing this now 35 years, there's only been one occasion in which we've discovered something while doing our work that the client dismissed us. How did that go? Without obviously, you know, revealing any details of who the county was. Not only was was I dismissed, but the law firm was dismissed also because we found out that the lawyer that the client were were were absolute liars. So it it it happened that that uh you know I I there was nothing, it was a it was the right thing to do because we we were we discovered that they were not presenting the information correctly, and they got found out, and so they had no choice but to to uh to fire us. So you you talk a little bit about uh transferring from a consultant role to an expert witness role. How does that work mechanically? Do you need to draw up a new contract? What are the what are the sorts of steps that are involved in moving from one role to the next? It's either done by a new engagement letter or a simple letter or email saying you're you were extending the relationship to to being the testifying expert. Let's talk a little bit about preparation. So you've accepted a case, you've drawn up an expert witness report, you're either going to get on the stand or you're gonna have a deposition. What are the sorts of things that you like to do to get in the right head space, to refresh your memory, to just prepare yourself generally for a big day, for a big matter? Well, let me just make something crystal clear. I never go into the box, the witness chair, unless I have unless I have prepared the initial draft of either direct examination or cross-examination. Okay. I'm doing this for many years, and I want to make sure that the lawyer and I are on the same page. And so I generally prepare all of the direct examination or cross, and I also prepare a draft of the questions that there the lawyer is going to ask the opposing expert. Because obviously it's rare that there's only one expert testifying in a case, right? There's there's two sides to every coin. And so there's generally two experts on every case. And my job is to make sure that we hit all the high points. And uh, you know, whether the lawyer is, you know, a well-seasoned machine or or um uh a younger, less experienced um practitioner, whether it be because of the venue or the industry, I find comfort in preparing in that fashion. And and to be honest with you, no, the the lawyers are very responsive to it. So you don't really get any pushback from attorneys who think you're kind of stepping on their toes getting involved in uh trial strategy? Uh no, this is not trial strategy. This is this is presentation. Oh, okay. Presentation, Mike. I'm I'm not there to I'm not there to opine as to law or any legal doctrine or any legal position. I'm there to express a professional opinion centered around financial issues, whether it be a evaluation of a business, a a reconstruction of accounting or financial records, uh a determination of an economic damage analysis. That's my job. And so my hope is that the lawyers that hire us, and I must say, I I've never I've never had a lawyer say, no, I don't need you to do that. Um they're they're very responsive and they respond very positively when we give them the tools to make their job easier. Um and so that's that's the way we do it, that's the way we do it. And by the way, I'll be very candid with you. The reason why I'm so adamant about it is because when I first started to do this work, I didn't do it. I didn't know to do it. And I kept on saying to myself, you know, why don't you ask the right questions? You know, and it's not just asking the right questions, Noah, it's asking the right questions in the right sequence that create the information you want the trier effect to understand. Because it's all a matter of communication. You you had mentioned earlier, and this stuck with me a little bit, that you your firm works across the country. So when you're getting into a new venue, say you're working in a new state or at a new level of government, whatever the case may be, you're working somewhere that you haven't worked before. What are the sorts of things that you have to do to prepare yourself? Do you have to, you know, thumb through the code? Do you have to uh talk to your attorney about, you know, what the trials look like in this venue versus that venue? You know, these real casual here, it's real formal there. What are the sorts of things that you as an expert witness have to do to prepare yourself for a potentially unfamiliar venue? That exercise starts when you're first retained. Because, and I'll give you a perfect example. In in valuation, there are different standards of value. There are two main standards that's called fair market value and fair value. And and different states have different standards. So if I'm doing a shareholder dispute in one state, the standard of value may be fair value. If I'm doing it in another state, it may be fair market value. And so I need to get a better understanding and a precise understanding of what is the standard of value that's being used. Okay, uh, one plus one equals two, whether you're in California or you're in Vermont. However, you want to make sure that everybody understands the architecture of the the mathematical equation. And and I'm hesitating to say say that like that. I I just use it as a simple example, but let me just share with you that what I do as a forensic accountant, it really has very little to do with math. In fact, that's the that's the misnomer that that that I that I always discuss when I teach at at uh universities and speak to students that are studying accounting or finance. As a forensic accountant, I'm not necessarily a mathematician. My job is to tell a story. The story happens to center around financial matters. But I'm not really quite sure that it's it's not a math test, nor is it a memorization test. Okay. So um, but to go back to your question, different states had different standards of value. Um, I I have never been in a forum, and I've testified all around the country, that that it wasn't formal. You know, whether I'm sitting in the chair physically in the courthouse, or now we we're we're seeing a lot of remote testifying. Um it's generally very formal. Uh I prefer to physically be in the courthouse because I like to try to connect with the trier of fact, whether it be a jury or it be a judge. Right? It's hard to make that connection with 16 people on a on a Zoom or Teams call. You don't know where to look. Right? And the lighting's not great, and you know, it it's it's it's it's more difficult. But I I it's it's not terribly difficult to gear up for the different venues. You know, you you talk about uh remote telepresence sorts of meetings, and I've heard from a lot of experts that that is indeed the direction that things have been moving. You've been doing this for quite a long time. What other ways has expert witnessing changed from when you were very first getting started until now? And are there any trends that you see moving forward as an expert besides uh telepresence? First of all, the the use of electronics in the courtroom is more frequent now than it was some 30 years ago. Um you you go into a courtroom now and you see an 80-inch television set standing on standing on you know a hundred-pound stand that rolls in front of and away from judge. It's hooked up to a laptop, it's hooked up to an iPad. It it it it often you they'll even have a paralegal or even a tech person flipping through pages in some type of workbook, whether it be Excel or it be a PowerPoint or it be a Canva presentation. It's been it it's there's an increased use of of electronics that again the the purpose is to communicate. And you know, they say no, uh a picture's worth a thousand words. Well, yes, so is a chart, you know, and and so and so it's very, very helpful to use this technology so that you can communicate more clearly and more precisely. You spoke earlier about how your job is primarily or one of the main components of it, is as a storyteller. I imagine that some of these electronic demonstratives aid you in that. Tell me a little bit about how you connect to the fact finder and uh how you present topics to laypersons. You know, when you're talking about uh account forensic accounting, this is obviously something that not all jurors are gonna be familiar with or understand. So, how do you tell a story in your niche? Well, let me let me answer that in the in the two questions. That's that's a compound question, Noah. You you know you're not supposed to ask an expert a compound question. Um, but I'm gonna break it down I'm gonna break it down into the two parts. So let's talk about first communicating with the judge who's sitting three feet away from you. Okay? It is not uncommon for me as as someone who testifies an enormous amount to physically take my chair and turn it so that the judge is not looking at the side of my head. That even if the judge doesn't stare at me the entire time, the judge knows that I'm focusing on him or her and I'm trying to connect with the judge and draw their attention to the areas that I think that are most important when I'm answering a question. It's a little more difficult to do that with a jury. When you're staring at a rectangular area in the courtroom that may be 20 feet away or 30 feet away, and there are a dozen or so people lined up in two rows, some of them don't want to be there, some of them want to be there too much, uh, and and you're trying to connect with them and trying to read if in fact they're understanding your examples and your and the concepts you're trying to uh uh express. I know I know a judge is getting me when he or she is taking notes. I know a judge is getting me if he or she stops me and asks a qu uh a question. You don't get that with a jury. Right. Like only on TV do you see a jury jumping out of their chair and saying nonsense, right? So but but you know it's it's part of the process and it takes experience, it takes practice, it it you have to both fail and succeed until you get to a point in which you're comfortable. And of course, you know, you're you're largely dependent upon the skills of the attorney that hired you. You know, I I I I often I often when I go into a courtroom, I often say to the attorney, the lead attorney on the case, I always ask them, D did you play football in in high school? And sometimes, you know, they'll say yes. I go, uh, me too. Remember when the coach used to say protect the quarterback? Yes. I go, well, I'm the quarterback today. So your job is to protect me. I'll do my job, but your job is to protect me. So, you know, that these are the things that I do to try to get myself together and get myself in the right frame of mind. I I love I love testifying. It's great. I don't I don't sleep the night before, even on an easy case. I practice out loud, mumbling when I'm in bed all hours a night, pretending what I'm gonna say, what stories I may share to make a point, what what analogies I may use. I don't sleep at all. Do you have any other elements to your pre-trial routine that you care to share? I have people who say they fast or they do yoga or they do an affirmation or you know they listen to heavy metal. Do you have a specific pretrial routine? If I would if I were to fast more than two hours in a day, I'm afraid something would happen to me. Now I I I can't I can't do that. I I I I generally don't eat before testifying only because I don't want to go to the bathroom. Sure. Um, but but I you know it's just uh I I I practiced the night before and and I must tell you, and I I I've testified I think I just counted the last 10 years. I think I testified over 50 times in the last 10 years. So I I a lawyer just asked me uh the other day, that's how I know the answer. But I must tell you, I I grew up in the food industry, and um I I think of my father every time I get to the witness box because I was the short order cook in my father's restaurant. And he used to yell at me the orders. And it was like it was like uh the the true essence of multitasking. And I always say to myself, if I could if I could handle that as a as a teenager, I can certainly handle a uh a difficult lawyer um trying to embarrass me in court. With a uh a father as a chef, I can confirm that that is indeed the case. Absolutely. Uh moving on, I I uh have been focusing a bit on depositions because a lot of newer expert witnesses, you know, they're gonna go into their first deposition. They don't know what to expect. It can happen at a lot of different places. Sometimes it can even be like a hotel room or it can be at you know somebody's office. You never know where it's gonna be, you never know what it's gonna be like. Some people don't know where to go, what to do. So if you could just walk me through a typical deposition uh for a newer expert witness, just walk me through uh the way that it goes step by step. So I was just I I I was a consultant in a deposition yesterday, a seven-hour deposition yesterday. Wow. And I prepared all of the documents for the deposition. My office did. We had all the questions. I think we had almost 1300 questions. Wow. So for your young, inexperienced experts, let me make something crystal clear. You never win a case in a deposition, but you can lose it. So let's I assume you're initially asking as the testifying witness in the deposition, right? That's your initial okay because because as I just said to be four, I I I often work with the attorneys to depose the another witness. But but when you are the testifying uh witness, you answer the questions exactly how they're asked. You know, there's there's no pictures on a baseball scorecard. And unless you're being videotaped, the deposition, the transcript doesn't show pictures either. And so the only way that a watchful eye or a reviewer uh can understand what you said is by reading the transcript. But you have to be very careful as to only answer the question that you're asked, don't speak more than that, don't anticipate what they're really trying to ask you. Answer what they said. And by the way, I often answer yes or no, because the question is a yes or no answer. It's not my job to say to the lawyer, let me tell you why the answer is no. No, they ask a question, they're trying to elicit a yes or no answer, you answer it yes or no, and you shut up until you get asked another question. Sure. And that can probably be a difficult urge for somebody who's a longtime expert who wants to be an educator and wants to tell, you know, the story. But uh Yes, there there there are people, whether they're really, really smart or really, really not smart, there are people that love to talk. Right? Just remember, the deposition is not your deposition.

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You're the target. It's the lawyer's deposition. You you're you you've been in depositions. The lawyer will say, and when the when the two lawyers fight because there's a a a vocal objection, right? An oral objection, and the lawyer will say, Counselor, this is my deposition. You cannot make any oral objections. Okay, and he's right, it's there, even in trial, it it's it's the lawyer's witness, right? And you just have to do what you're told. Absolutely. Moving forward to uh a couple more general questions, getting off on the right foot with a new engagement. What are the things that you can do uh when an engagement begins to ensure that it's going to be effective and efficient, maybe even a little bit of fun. I think the best answer to that question is don't wait for the lawyer to ask you for something. Whether it be information or work product, try to do the work at a pace that's a little ahead of what the attorney's looking for. Because then the attorney will have a little more confidence in you that you understand the scope and the girth of the project. Again, that was a compound question, but I'm gonna answer it anyway, even though there was no standing objection. I would uh the first thing that we do after we send an engagement letter is we send out what we call an initial document request. And those documents require books and records and other business and financial documents that are maintained. In the ordinary course of business, they could be bank statements, brokerage statements, accounting records, tax returns, operating agreements, leases, insurance policies, mortgage and loan applications, employment contracts, etc. And we review those with what I would call a watchful eye as they relate to the objective of the engagement. And so that's what we that's what we try to do um to um to uh set the the matter out correctly in the first instance. The next thing is to make sure that we are our follow-up requests are well documented. Now, 35 years ago when I started this, they didn't have email. I know you probably don't know what the world looked like, Noah, without email, but there used to be a chisel and a piece of stone. And then then they had then they had uh a fax machine, and then they and then and then uh every time you needed to communicate with the lawyer, you had to type a formal letter and mail the letter. And now things are done much more promptly and much faster, and and and it's the the immediate gratification that people are looking for is both good and bad. But in essence, there we have technology now to communicate with with the lawyers to for them to understand what's going on. And so we use that technology, whether we set up uh a Teams channel for the people involved in a case, so we can just chat back and forth, or we can text through the computer program, our our practice management software, or we can send an email out. Um it's really very, you know, everybody's pretty accessible, even when they're not necessarily working in the office. Their phone works like a computer now, also. So we try to do that to the best of our ability. It it's it's a little difficult sometimes. You know, we work on 50 to 60 cases at a time. You know, we're we're 12 people here in the office, and so it it's it's hard sometimes to do that, but we try to do it as to the best of our ability. Before we wrap up, do you have any last advice for expert witnesses and in particular newer expert witnesses or attorneys who are working with experts? I think the the best thing that ever happened to me was when I, in the early 90s, when I started to um inquire about the certifications and credentials that I needed to be a qualified expert in business valuation, forensic accounting, etc. I sought out experienced practitioners that I could befriend, that I could speak to candidly, to have them be a mentor to me. And there have been three or four people in my professional career that that have served that role, and I'm incredibly grateful because I went from in 1990 with a pregnant wife, expecting my first child, and seeing that ad that I discussed with you before, and decided that I was going to do something a little different to create a firm in midtown New York City in Rockefeller Center with a dozen professionals and a national practice. I could not have done all this without the encouragement and the guidance and quite honestly the affection of other professionals that didn't mind helping me. And I think that has really been um a great source of of the success formula that we've kind of created here. And I try to be that person to the younger people in the office here. And and uh although you know it's it's sometimes frustrating, it it's it's a necessity. It's a necessity. Sage advice, Mr. Gottlieb. Thank you so much for joining me here today. Pleasure. Have a great day, and thank you as always to our listeners for joining us for another edition of Engaging Experts. Cheers.

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Thank you for listening to our podcast, Engaging Experts. Our show notes are available on our website, roundtable group.com.