By Bill Hartzer · Published · How this site is researched
Clause 3 requires that nothing enters a report on the authority of a system, and Clause 4 requires that before any output is adopted the expert identifies the specific thing it would be checked against. Federal Rule of Evidence 702 asks whether an opinion reflects a reliable application of reliable methods to the facts of the case; this checklist is how those obligations get discharged on a finished draft rather than in principle. A verification checklist is only useful applied to a finished draft, which is why it is the last thing done rather than the first.
The procedure is Chapter Twenty-Five of the book. This is the working form, reproduced so it can be marked up rather than admired. It is free to use and to adapt, including in paid work, with no permission needed and no attribution required. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and whether any of it suits your engagement is a question for you and for retaining counsel.
Appendix C — The verification checklist
The procedure is Chapter Twenty-Five. This is the working form.
Before you begin
Report is final. Every checkable assertion extracted to a list, one row each, with the page and paragraph where it appears and the category it falls into. Sources at hand or ordered.
The six categories
1. Citations and references. Every case, article, standard, treatise, manual, regulation, specification, or document referred to by name.
Check: the thing exists · it is what you say it is · it says what you cite it for.
The third check is the one that is skipped and the one that fails most often.
2. Quotations. Every passage in quotation marks, from any source.
Check: open the source · locate the passage · compare character by character · confirm the attribution.
Never verify a quotation against a list, a summary, or a system's rendering.
3. Numbers and computations. Every figure, total, percentage, rate, count, average, and derived value.
Check: recompute in the thing that computed it · confirm the result matches the report · confirm the computation is preserved.
4. Dates and times. Every date, time, duration, interval, and sequence claim.
Check: against the source record · re-verify the time zone conversion · confirm the original value is retained alongside the normalized one.
5. Locators. Every page reference, Bates number, section number, exhibit number, transcript page and line, paragraph number, and file path.
Check: follow it · confirm it lands where you said.
Locators drift silently during revision. Check them last, after the report is final.
6. Technical specifications and standards content. Every threshold, tolerance, rating, interval, requirement, or limit.
Check: against the governing document · in the revision operative on the relevant date · obtained from the issuing body or an authorized source.
Disposition — one per row, no others
| Code | Meaning | Required note |
|---|---|---|
| **Verified | Confirmed against the source | The source, identified |
| **Corrected | Was wrong; now fixed | What it was; what it is |
| **Removed | Could not be supported; taken out | Why |
| **Limited | Not independently verifiable; remains with an express limitation | Where the limitation appears in the report |
There is no fifth disposition. In particular there is no probably fine.
When a source cannot be located
One. Look properly — search on the substance, not the citation. Mangled citations to real sources are common.
Two. Ask. Counsel, the colleague, your own prior file.
Three. Decide. Either it is located and the assertion stands on it, or the assertion comes out. What you may do instead is restate it as something you can support: I understand from counsel that…
Closing the pass
Date it. Record who performed each part. File the list in the engagement folder. Log the pass with its totals — verified, corrected, removed, limited.
If the report is revised afterward, the changed portions get a fresh pass, and so does anything the change touched.
What this pass does not catch
It catches four of the five failures in Chapter Five. It cannot catch agreeableness, because a report shaped by a leading question contains no defective assertion to find. That defense is sequence, it operates months earlier, and no amount of checking substitutes for it.
* * *
Using it
Copy the page into whatever you already work in. A word processor, a spreadsheet, a notes application and a text file all satisfy the obligation equally, and the tool matters far less than whether the record was made at the time. What does not satisfy it is intending to write the record up later, because the value of a contemporaneous record is precisely that it was contemporaneous, and that property cannot be added afterwards.
This working paper is reproduced here in full. The other five, and what each contains, are on the working papers page. The full reasoning behind all of them is in the book.