ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the notion that the role of the expert witness in modern Anglo-American trials is fundamentally paradoxical. It also focuses on the notion that the way to avoid most of the pitfalls awaiting experts is to be well prepared as a professional, for the task in general, and for the task as it presents itself in each individual case. The expert witness is caught in a tug-of-war between what the formal rules expect of the role and the dominant messages sent by the structure of the process. The legal system has an exclusionary system of rules of evidence, that is to say, the rules of evidence work mainly by filtering out certain kinds. Examples include: evidence not logically relevant to the law at issue, character evidence, repairs after an accident, settlement discussions, hearsay, and insufficiently well-grounded expert testimony, among many others.
