The Attorney Across From You Has Already Read Your Report — With AI

According to William & Mary Law School’s Center for Legal and Court Technology, one law firm used AI to review an expert witness’s 63 prior deposition transcripts. The AI uncovered past statements that were inconsistent with the expert’s current report — a task that would have taken a team of associates days.

This is not a warning about the future. This is a description of the present.

The Tools Are Already in the Room

Attorneys today have access to an increasingly sophisticated arsenal of AI-powered tools designed with one purpose: to find weaknesses in expert testimony. Filevine’s Depo CoPilot cross-references your live testimony against case documents in real time, flagging inconsistencies as you speak. Dodon.ai can process an expert’s prior deposition transcripts in minutes, surfacing contradictions and generating page-and-line cited summaries. CoCounsel, built by Thomson Reuters, can analyze documents, prepare cross-examination strategies for expert witnesses, and draft litigation motions — and over one million legal professionals already use it.

These tools aren’t experimental. They’re in active use at law firms right now.

And it goes beyond the attorneys questioning you. The Bond Solon Expert Witness Survey, published in November 2025, found that 20% of expert witnesses in the UK had used AI tools in their work — double the rate from the prior year’s survey. The practice is normalizing on every side of the courtroom.

What These Tools Actually Do

The capabilities are worth understanding in concrete terms, because they change the nature of what you’re walking into when you take the stand.

Cross-case inconsistency detection means an AI can compare your current report against prior testimony, reports, and published articles you’ve produced, then flag any statement that could be framed as contradictory. Alternative conclusion generation means the AI identifies conclusions you rejected or never considered, giving the attorney a roadmap for suggesting your analysis was incomplete. Real-time deposition assistance means that while you’re answering questions, the AI is analyzing your responses and feeding the attorney follow-up questions in real time.

Techniques like “AI shadowboxing” — where AI simulates opposing counsel’s questioning — are already being used to help experts refine their responses before trial. AI can even translate technical vocabulary into language designed to be more persuasive to a jury.

The Preparation Gap

Here’s what’s striking about this landscape: every one of these tools was designed to help attorneys attack expert testimony. Not a single one was designed to help the expert prepare for that attack.

Think about that asymmetry. The attorneys preparing to cross-examine you have AI that can process your entire career’s worth of testimony in minutes. They have tools that generate targeted questions designed to exploit the specific methodological choices in your evaluation. They have real-time assistance during your deposition.

And what do most forensic evaluators have? The same preparation process they’ve used for years: review your report, maybe run through some questions with a colleague, and hope you’ve caught everything.

This Isn’t About Fear — It’s About Preparation Equity

None of this means the work you do is inadequate. It means the standard for what “prepared” looks like has changed, and most forensic professionals don’t realize it yet.

The question isn’t whether AI is changing forensic testimony — it already has. The question is whether the professionals being scrutinized by these tools have access to equivalent preparation resources. The attorneys have leveled up their game. The evaluators haven’t had a way to level up theirs — until now.

The strongest position you can take isn’t to avoid this shift. It’s to match it. When you’ve already identified the vulnerabilities in your own report, stress-tested your methodology, and prepared for the specific cross-examination questions that AI would generate, you walk into that courtroom with a kind of confidence that comes from knowing you’ve done everything possible to make your work defensible.

That’s not a technology argument. That’s a professional diligence argument. And it’s one the courts are increasingly recognizing.

ForensicShield was built to close this preparation gap — giving forensic evaluators the same caliber of AI-powered analysis that opposing counsel already has, but pointed inward, toward strengthening your work rather than attacking it.

References

Bond Solon. (2025, November 7). Expert witness survey 2025. https://www.bondsolon.com/news-and-insights/expert-witness-survey-2025/

Dodonai. (n.d.). AI deposition summary software — Summaries & services in minutes. https://www.dodon.ai/deposition-summary-software/

Esquire Deposition Solutions. (2026, January 22). AI's promising role with expert testimony. Esquire Deposition Solutions. https://www.esquiresolutions.com/ais-promising-role-with-expert-testimony/

Filevine. (2024, September 12). Filevine revolutionizes depositions with Depo CoPilot, an AI-powered second chair for litigation attorneys [Press release]. https://www.filevine.com/news/filevine-revolutionizes-depositions-with-depo-copilot-an-ai-powered-second-chair-for-litigation-attorneys/

Richmond, B. (2025, January 5). Trust but Verif(AI): The use of AI as a tool to analyze credibility of expert witnesses and their materials. Center for Legal & Court Technology, William & Mary Law School. https://www.legaltechcenter.net/2025/01/05/trust-but-verifai-benrichmond/

Thomson Reuters. (2026, February 24). One million professionals turn to CoCounsel as Thomson Reuters scales AI for regulated industries [Press release]. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/one-million-professionals-turn-to-cocounsel-as-thomson-reuters-scales-ai-for-regulated-industries-302694903.html