The Expert Record logo — a ruled transcript pageThe Expert RecordThe standard for expert witnesses using AI

Hartzer Press

The Expert Record

The Standard for Expert Witnesses Using AI. Thirty-two chapters, the eight clauses, and nine appendices.

By Bill Hartzer · Published

The Expert Record is a working manual for professionals whose signed opinions can be examined under oath. It runs to thirty-two chapters in eight parts, with nine appendices meant to be photocopied and used rather than read, and it was written to be handed to a colleague in five years without an apology.

The problem it takes on is this. Artificial intelligence did not create a new way for an expert to be wrong. It created a new record of how the expert got there — complete, timestamped, verbatim, held by someone else, and increasingly producible in discovery. That record exists whether or not you manage it. The only question is whether it would survive being read aloud.

The book is neither a warning against these systems nor a case for them. It is a working method, drawn from the way careful professionals in every discipline have always protected their independence. Its centerpiece is a short protocol — the eight clauses — but the book is the argument for why those clauses are the right ones, and the four hundred pages of practice that sit around them.

What is in it

  • The Expert Record Standard — eight clauses, one page, licensed for adoption
  • What the decided cases actually hold, and why the line is not where the commentary puts it
  • A task taxonomy that works in any discipline, and a six-step method for productions too large to read
  • Why you script the analysis and never chat with the evidence
  • The verification pass, the contemporaneous log, and the deposition answer that ends the topic
  • Four chapters written to retaining and examining counsel
  • Nine appendices, including the author's own contemporaneous AI-use log for the writing of the book

Who it is for

Expert witnesses in every field — engineering, medicine, appraisal, forensic accounting, economics, digital forensics — the lawyers who retain and examine them, and any professional whose signed work could one day become an exhibit.

It does not assume you use these systems, and it does not assume you want to. Several of its chapters are most useful to a professional who has decided to use nothing at all, because the questions asked at deposition are the same either way and I don't use it is an answer that has to be supportable rather than merely sincere. The chapter on why a blanket prohibition is not a policy is written for exactly that reader.

Contents

Front matter

  1. A Note on How This Book Was Written
  2. How to Use This Book

Part I

The Record You Are Already Making

  1. OneThree Hundred and Fifty Pages
  2. TwoThe Line That Is Actually Being Drawn
  3. ThreeWhat the Machine Keeps
  4. FourInstrument or Source
  5. FiveFive Ways It Fails
  6. SixWhy “We Don’t Let Our Experts Use AI” Is Not a Policy
  7. InterleafThe Expert Record Standard

Part II

The Engagement, Stage by Stage

  1. SevenRetention and Scope
  2. EightIntake and Inventory
  3. NineGreen, Yellow, Red
  4. TenTwo Rules Without Exception

Part III

Research and Investigation

  1. ElevenReconstructing the Past
  2. TwelveDocuments, Filings, and Transcripts at Scale
  3. ThirteenStandards, Specifications, and the Literature

Part IV

Digital Evidence at Scale

  1. FourteenProductions Too Large to Read
  2. FifteenA Six-Step Examination Method
  3. SixteenScript the Analysis; Do Not Chat with the Evidence
  4. SeventeenHandling, Confidentiality, and the Protective Order

Part V

Discovery of the Record

  1. EighteenYour Method Is Discoverable
  2. NineteenWhat Is Protected, and What Is Not
  3. TwentyPreserving the Record
  4. Twenty-OneProducing It When Asked

Part VI

The Report

  1. Twenty-TwoA Report Is Not One Kind of Writing
  2. Twenty-ThreeIndependence as a Working Practice
  3. Twenty-FourLimitations, and the Sentences That Keep a Finding Standing

Part VII

Proving the Method

  1. Twenty-FiveThe Independent-Source Rule and the Verification Pass
  2. Twenty-SixThe Governing Test
  3. Twenty-SevenThe Contemporaneous Log
  4. Twenty-EightThe Deposition

Part VIII

For Counsel, and for Everyone Else

  1. Twenty-NineVetting an Expert’s AI Use at Retention
  2. ThirtyExamining the Other Side’s Expert
  3. Thirty-OneReading the Rules as They Move
  4. Thirty-TwoIf You Never Testify

Appendices

The Working Materials

  1. AAI-Use Log Template
  2. BEngagement Letter Provisions
  3. CThe Verification Checklist
  4. DDeposition Question Sets
  5. EReproducible Analysis — What to Script
  6. FPreservation and Production Protocol
  7. GGlossary
  8. HHow This Book Was Written
  9. IThe Case Record

How it is built to last

The book states no case names, no product names, no model versions, and no vendor policies. That was a deliberate constraint applied to every chapter, and it is why this site exists: the material that carries a date lives here, where it can carry one honestly, and the printed volume carries only what will still be true when the current generation of systems has been replaced twice over.

The test applied to every sentence in the manuscript was whether it would need rewriting in eighteen months. Where the answer was yes, the sentence either came out or was rewritten at the level of the principle underneath it. That cost the book some of the vividness that comes from naming a case and describing what happened in it, and bought it the ability to be handed to a colleague in five years without an apology.

Publication details to follow. Formats, ISBNs, and retailers will be listed here. To be told when it is available, write to record@theexpertrecord.com.

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