DAMAGE ESTIMATION: UNDERSTANDABLE, OBJECTIVE, QUICK

Understandable Testimony

Most important, our expert economists excel at explaining technical matters simply and clearly. A competent professional analysis is just the beginning. The expert must then explain to the court what s/he has done clearly, in simple every-day language. The expert must be a good teacher. Teaching has always been a large part of our work. As college faculty, we taught economics and statistics to under-graduate and graduate students. And today, as part of Integral's continuing legal education program, we routinely teach economics and statistics to employment law attorneys. Most have little or no background in either subject, but the evaluation forms they fill out at the end of each session always give us the highest grades for clarity.

A Reputation for Professional Objectivity

As important as clarity is, the expert's ability to persuade the court that the testimony presented is completely objective is just as important. In particular, the trier of fact must believe that the expert's testimony is not biased towards the side that is paying his/her fee. We accomplish this in two ways. First, we prepare a strictly professional estimate using conventional, state-of-the art procedures accepted inside and outside of academia. Second, we routinely testify for both the plaintiff and defense sides and use the same basic methodology on each.

Quick Turnaround

Finally, although our expert economists and statisticians have in the past taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, we now devote ourselves exclusively to expert-witness work. Free of classroom or research commitments, we can accommodate your schedule rather than asking you to accommodate ours.

The first part of every damage estimation involves projecting the earnings stream the plaintiff would have had if the allegedly damaging incident had never occurred. We call this the "but-for" earnings stream. We project "but-for" earnings using a methodology based directly and firmly on the principles of labor economics and the estimation procedures accepted by trained labor economists inside and outside of academia. This methodology - often referred to as "age-earnings profile" estimation is the state-of-the-art approach to damage estimation. It is the approach being taught in undergraduate and graduate labor economics classes today. And it is the approach being used by the U.S. Justice Department to estimate the lost earnings of World Trade Center victims. Most of the expert reports that we review use totally ad hoc and therefore totally inappropriate techniques for projecting future (and past) "but-for" earnings.

Page 2 of 2