The Expert Witness CV: What Survives Cross-Examination

By John Mahoney · August 19, 2026

Your clinical CV and your expert-witness CV are not the same document. The first is read by people who want to hire you. The second is read by someone whose job is to discredit you. Build the second one differently.

Why this document is different

A hiring committee skims your CV looking for reasons to advance you. Opposing counsel reads your expert CV looking for a single line they can turn into a cross-examination that makes you look careless, dishonest, or unqualified. They have time, motive, and often an investigator.

That reframes every choice. The goal is not to look impressive. The goal is to have nothing on the page that can be turned against you under oath.

The rules

Round nothing. "Approximately 500 procedures" invites "so, fewer than 500?" State what you can document, or state a defensible range you would stand behind on the record.

No ambiguous dates. Gaps and overlapping ranges look like concealment even when they are innocent. Use clean start and end dates. If there is a genuine gap, be ready to explain it in one sentence.

No lapsed memberships listed as current. A board certification, license, or society membership that quietly expired becomes "Doctor, you listed this as current — it expired in 2022, didn't it?" That one exchange can color a jury's view of everything else you said.

No inflated titles. "Director of" something you coordinated for one year, "Professor" when you are an adjunct — these are the easiest possible impeachment. Use the exact title your institution would confirm if called.

Publications you can defend. If a paper is listed, you may be asked about its methodology and conclusions, especially if they cut against your opinion in this case. List work you still stand behind and can discuss.

What to include

• Current board certification with dates

• Active state licensure, with license numbers available

• Current clinical appointment and hospital affiliations

• Case volume for the specific procedure or condition at issue, stated accurately

• Relevant teaching and training roles

• Publications and presentations in the relevant area

• Prior expert engagements and testimony history (see below — this is now largely mandatory to track)

The testimony list you must keep

Federal practice and most state courts require disclosure of your prior testimony, typically the last four years of cases in which you testified at trial or deposition. This is not optional and it is checked.

Start the log with your first case: case name, jurisdiction, retaining party, plaintiff or defense, and the date. Maintaining it from the beginning is trivial. Reconstructing it years later, under a disclosure deadline, is miserable and error-prone — and an incomplete or inaccurate list is itself impeachment material.

The ratio that gets raised

Opposing counsel will often ask what percentage of your expert work is plaintiff versus defense, and what percentage of your income comes from expert work at all.

Neither answer is disqualifying on its own, but lopsided ones invite a narrative: the 100%-plaintiff expert who "never met a case without negligence," or the physician whose expert income suggests a business rather than an occasional professional service. Working both sides over time, and keeping expert work a genuine minority of your professional activity, are the facts that make these questions land softly. You cannot fix the ratio the week before a deposition — it is built case by case.

Keep it current, keep it consistent

The version of your CV produced in this case will be compared to the version produced in your last case and the one on your practice website. Discrepancies between them — a title that changed, a number that grew, a role that appeared or vanished — become questions about which version is the truthful one.

Maintain one authoritative CV. Update it deliberately. Assume every version you have ever circulated still exists somewhere and may be placed next to this one.

The underlying principle

An expert CV is not a marketing document that happens to be used in court. It is a sworn representation of your qualifications that happens to also introduce you. Build it so that the most hostile possible reading of every line is still accurate — and cross-examination on your credentials becomes a formality instead of a wound.