1. Two Ways to Find the Same Expert
When a law firm needs a specialized medical, engineering, or financial expert, it can go through a referral or broker agency — which locates the expert, handles the engagement, and is compensated out of that intermediary position — or it can retain the expert directly through a directory listing and negotiate the fee itself.
Neither model is dishonest, and full-service agencies genuinely do work: vetting, conflict screening, scheduling, replacing an expert who falls through. The structural difference is fee transparency. In a direct engagement, the number on the expert's fee schedule is the number the firm pays. In an intermediated engagement, the agency's compensation is typically built into the rate or billed alongside it — and agencies do not, as a rule, publish their margins. We know of no published, independent survey measuring average agency markups, and you should treat any specific "average markup" percentage you read as unsourced marketing (including the figures that used to appear in an earlier version of this article).
2. What the Market Data Does Show
What is measurable is what experts themselves charge. The 2026 ExpertPages® Fees & Practices Survey (400+ experts, conducted independently by DeBow Communications) puts the average expert's own hourly fee at $465, with 98% billing hourly or hourly/flat hybrid, and 74% requiring a minimum engagement fee. The Expert Institute's placement data across 100,000+ cases shows averages of $356/hour for review, $448 for deposition, and $478 for trial.
Those figures are the baseline an attorney can sanity-check any quote against: if the all-in rate you are quoted for a given specialty sits far above the published averages for that specialty, ask what the difference is buying — additional service, or intermediation.
3. Questions to Ask Before You Retain Through Anyone
- Is the rate I am quoted the expert's own fee schedule rate? May I see that schedule?
- Is the intermediary compensated per hour billed, per engagement, or by subscription — and by whom?
- Do I get direct communication with the expert before retention, or only through the intermediary?
- Who holds the engagement contract — my firm and the expert, or the agency?
A direct directory model (the one this site uses: experts pay a flat annual listing fee, attorneys pay nothing, and the fee negotiation happens between attorney and expert with no per-hour intermediary) answers those four questions by construction. A good agency will also answer them — in writing. Either way, the published survey data above is your negotiating floor.
Related Reading
- The 2026 Expert Witness Fee Guide — the published rate data referenced above, with sources
- Browse the WitnessDirect roster — every listed expert's fee schedule, direct