Expert Witnesses

Finding an expert or seeing if an expert has been qualified as such can be a challenging legal research exercise. Here are some tips and links to help you.

Tip 1

Use the Canadian Expert Witness Directory through Litigator on WestlawNext Canada. The directory links to cases the expert has been qualified in. You need a WNC password and access to the Litigator component for  this of course, but it is a great place to start.

Tip 2

To find out if there are experts on your issue whose expertise has been qualified by the courts, search on CanLII for the following string:

qualif! & expert /p [insert your specific subject area with “/p” between each word]

This is a blunt force full text search so you will get results that are not relevant mixed in with those that are.

Tip 3

Check out the University of Toronto Blue Book of experts, or visit your local university website to search for academics.

Tip 4

Ask your friendly neighbourhood law librarian to search for experts – they will likely use tools like industry association websites to see who the prolific writers and presenters are on specific topics in addition to the usual paths above.

Have some advice on this topic? Please add your comments.