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| The Role of the Valuation Consultant in Litigation: If scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise. Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 702 Click on the hyperlinks below for more information about services provided by a valuation consultant in litigation.
The Scope of Litigation Consulting Services The proliferation in areas related to litigation requires expertise, experience, and training as never before. Adding a qualified litigation consultant to your legal team will provide invaluable benefits to both you and your clients if your professional work is in any of the following areas:
Why Valuators Are the Premier Litigation Consultants Professionals with a valuation background have come to be known as the premier litigation consultants because their knowledge of business value—and what drives value—perfectly situates them to counsel business owners and their legal advisors on a myriad of issues going well beyond valuing a business enterprise, or component parts thereof. The breadth
of their exposures—combined with
knowledge gained through training and experience—prepares such practitioners
to take on a variety of litigation consulting challenges that can include
personal and commercial damages, breach of contract, tort and environment
liability, and patent/trademark/copyright/trade secrets infringement. With this diverse background, valuation and litigation consultants offer the unique capacity to assimilate financial information from a variety of complex situations and—more importantly—articulate and communicate the relevant meaning of this information for the audiences involved in a litigation setting. Simply put, they pull together the numbers and data, and they make sense out of them. And it is this ability to complete the picture that makes litigation consultants such a valuable addition to the legal team.
How a Valuation Consultant Can Benefit You Litigation Team The fundamental role of the valuation practitioner is to determine the value of intangible assets held by businesses or individuals. The nature of this activity is very complex, however, by virtue of the information-gathering process and the methodologies used in the value determination, the consultant is well positioned to leverage his or her expertise in a litigation strategic role. As a litigation team member, for example, the valuation consultant can assist in discovery and trail preparation in a number of ways:
While all of the above activities may or may not be required in a given situation, the fundamental role of a litigation consultant is to help identify financial and economic issues and develop the most effective approach to dealing with these issues.
How to Select a Valuation Professional for You Litigation Team A valuation professional should be able to demonstrate through education, training and experience, knowledge and competence in performing valuations of private enterprises, performing calculations of damages in litigation, and determining intangible property values. Of the utmost importance are the credentials—representing specific training and mastery of the litigation-related body of knowledge—and one's affiliation with a recognized organizations such as the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts (NACVA). Members of the AICPA and NAVCA are required to adhere to industry standards in performing valuation services and communicating their conclusions of value. Standards are intended to assure users the service they receive meets an industry acceptable level of care, due diligence, thoroughness and quality, and the valuator adheres to ethical guidelines in the performance of his or her engagements. Additional qualifications the experienced litigation consultant may offer include a familiarity with Rules of Evidence, the attorney work product privilege, the professional standards of other organizations besides the AICPA and NACVA, the Rules of Court, courtroom protocol and etiquette, and visual, written, and auditory communication techniques.
The complexity of today's litigation environment demands competent, qualified experts. The courts have confirmed this. Daubert, Kumho, and others are redefining what it means to be a qualified expert. Our firm's expertise includes areas of accounting, tax, finance, economics, and, most importantly, valuation theory and application as it relates to business and intangible asset value determinations. Adding our expertise and experience to your litigation team in these areas can literally mean the difference between winning and losing a case. That is why the concept of teamwork is so important.
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