Reading an expert's CV for admissibility risk

Opposing counsel reads your expert's CV looking for the motion to exclude. Read it that way first.

Start at the back: the testimony list

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(a)(2)(B) requires the report to list cases in which the expert testified in the previous four years. Read every entry you can pull. Look for exclusions or limitations, for testimony on the opposite side of your issue, and for a pattern of work for one side only — none is automatically disqualifying, but each is a cross-examination outline if you do not find it first.

Credentials: match the claim to the register

Every credential on the CV that the opinion depends on should resolve to a public register entry: the state board for a PE, CPA, or medical licence; the certifying body for a CFE, CFF, ACTAR, or a digital-forensics certification. Check status, issue date, and discipline. Then check fit: the question is not whether the expert is distinguished, but whether the credential covers the specific opinion — a structural PE opining on biomechanics, or a clinician opining outside the specialty and setting of the care at issue, is the classic qualification gap.

Publications and the timeline

Publications cut both ways: they support reliability under Daubert and acceptance under Frye, and they are impeachment material when a position has moved. Finally, lay the CV against your case period: did the expert practice in this field, in this setting, at the time the events occurred? Courts ask; jurors understand the answer.

This is the same reading our Vetting Standard applies when a claimed firm submits documents for the Document-Checked badge: licence and certification checked against the issuing registers, and a current CV on file. The badge records that the documents were checked and when — court qualification stays case-by-case in your forum.

Sources: Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(a)(2)(B); Expert Institute retention guidance (consulted 2026-11-02). Information, not legal advice.