The Expert Record

An expert who uses an AI system is making a record whether or not anyone is keeping one. The Expert Record sets out the eight-clause standard that keeps that record defensible, the working method behind it, and the questions the other side will ask when it is not.

About the book

An expert witness who opens an AI system is doing something that will be asked about. Not hypothetically, and not in a few years. It is being asked about now, in depositions, in Daubert motions, and from the bench, and the question is rarely whether the expert used a system. It is what the expert did with it, what was checked, and what can be shown.

Most of the guidance available to an expert facing that question is either a prohibition that nobody follows or an enthusiasm that nobody can defend. Neither survives cross-examination. What survives is a method the expert actually used, applied consistently, recorded as the work proceeded, and capable of being produced.

The Expert Record is that method. It is built around the Expert Record Standard, eight clauses that govern how an expert may use an AI system without surrendering the independence that makes an opinion admissible. The clauses are short enough to adopt and specific enough to test, and each one is written so that a violation is visible rather than arguable.

The book does not take a position on which systems are good. It takes a position on what has to remain true regardless of which one an expert uses: the expert reaches the conclusion, the expert verifies every fact against something that exists independently of the system, the analysis can be run again and return the same answer, and the record of all of it is made at the time rather than reconstructed afterward.

Who it is for

• Expert witnesses in any discipline — technical, financial, medical, forensic, or economic — who use AI systems in their work and will be asked about it under oath.
• Retaining counsel who need to vet an expert's AI practice before the engagement letter is signed, rather than discovering it in a deposition.
• Examining counsel who need to know what to ask the other side's expert, in what order, and what the answers mean.
• Consulting and forensic firms that need one defensible policy across a bench of experts instead of a prohibition each expert quietly works around.
• Anyone whose work product is examined including investigators, appraisers, auditors, and analysts who never testify but whose conclusions are still challenged.

What is inside

Eight parts and 32 chapters, followed by nine appendices that are meant to be used rather than read. The book moves through an engagement in the order it actually happens: retention and scope, intake, research, analysis of evidence at scale, discovery of the method itself, the report, and the deposition.

• The Expert Record Standard. Eight clauses covering sequence, non-delegation, independent authority, checkability, reproducible analysis, custody and confidentiality, the contemporaneous record, and disclosure. Version 1.0 is licensed for adoption by individual experts and by firms.
• Green, yellow, red. A working taxonomy that sorts any proposed use of a system into one that is safe, one that requires a verification step, and one that is not available to an expert at all.
• Instrument or source. The distinction the whole subject turns on, and the test that tells an expert which one a system is being used as in any given moment.
• A six-step examination method for productions too large to read, built so that the same production examined twice produces the same findings.
• The contemporaneous log. What to record, when to record it, and why a log written at the time is worth more than a far more detailed one assembled the week before the deposition.
• Deposition question sets for both sides — the questions that will be asked, what each one is really testing, and the answers that hold up.
• Nine appendices including a log template, engagement letter provisions, a verification checklist, a preservation and production protocol, and a glossary. Appendices A through F may be reproduced and adapted for use in practice.

About the author

Bill Hartzer has spent more than 25 years working at the intersection of search engines, domain names, digital advertising, internet infrastructure, and online reputation. He advises organizations from startups to Fortune 500 companies, and serves as an expert witness in matters involving search, digital marketing, and domain names.

The book’s own site

The Expert Record Standard, the case record of decisions involving experts and artificial intelligence, the author's own AI-use log for this book, and errata are maintained at theexpertrecord.com. Hartzer Press is the publisher of record.

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