We have posted previously on tips for selecting a qualified school safety expert witness.  We have had excellent feedback from attorneys as well as from key personnel from two of the nation’s largest insurers of public and non-public K12 schools. 

I wrote an expanded article which was published in Campus Safety Magazine which has likewise had good feedback from readers of that magazine.  This is likely because there can be problems with the qualifications and credibility of some expert witnesses in any field, school safety experts are largely unregulated. While there are numerous talented, honest and highly qualified school safety experts, this lack of regulation can make it extremely difficult to properly evaluate expert witnesses for school safety cases.   Reader feedback from the Campus Safety article indicated the need for more detail on how to screen school safety subject matter experts.

We decided to develop an expanded paper on this topic to provide assistance to school officials, risk managers, insurance professionals, attorneys and judges who are tasked with evaluating qualified expert witnesses for cases involving school safety.  Evaluating an Expert Witness for School Safety Cases is a comprehensive research paper on this important topic. This can be a critical aspect for litigation and criminal cases involving technical questions relating to school security, school violence, bullying, student supervision, school crisis planning, school bus security and other areas where school safety experts are often required for defense counsel and for prosecutors or plaintiff’s counsel.  While finding a properly qualified school safety expert witness is important for litigation support, it is especially crucial when a testifying school safety expert witness is needed.  We have tried to address this in this paper.

Fortunately, Attorney Sue Ann Hartig was kind enough to assist me by reviewing and editing this paper.  Mrs. Hartig is an accomplished attorney who also is a subject matter expert who presents on school child custody issues.  With her unique background, she provided valuable insight for this paper.

We hope this paper will prove useful to you in your work.

We will soon release a new paper focused on tornado preparedness for schools and are working on several more papers that will be released later in the year.  We welcome reader feedback and suggestions for other topics that might be helpful to our readers. 

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