A panel of experts is a coordination problem
Complex proceedings need more than one opinion. Economics, forensic accounting, industry knowledge and data analysis each answer a different question, and each is usually instructed on its own schedule.
We hold the claimant record all of them draw on. We do not select experts, position them for a forum, or judge which credentials will survive challenge — and a participation supplier offering views on that is out of its depth.
One data specification for the whole panel, agreed once, at the start.
Four ways a strong panel underperforms
None of these are failures of expertise. Each is a failure of sequence, and each is visible from the register long before it reaches a hearing.
Experts instructed one at a time
Each arrives with a fresh data request, and the register is asked retrospectively for the fourth time.
Opinions that do not sit together
Two experts on the same case, reasoning from different assumptions about the same population.
The right opinion, the wrong witness
Sound analysis presented by someone this forum, or this jurisdiction, will not credit.
Analysis that outruns the evidence
A model built on fields nobody thought to collect while the register was still open.
A bench, not a specialist
Ankura is a global consulting firm whose disputes practice exists to produce analysis and testimony. Its team spans accountants, economists, mathematicians, data scientists and technologists, and it is among the most experienced firms in the world at putting expert testimony in front of a tribunal.
That breadth is the reason for the pairing. Where a case needs one discipline, it needs one specialist. Where it needs four, someone has to decide which four, in what order, and how the opinions fit together without contradicting each other.
- Firm
- Ankura Consulting Group — global consulting; disputes practice
- Role
- Expert strategy: which disciplines a matter needs, expert selection and positioning, and consistency across the panel
- Bench
- Accountants, economists, mathematicians, data scientists and technologists, alongside experts drawn from business, academic and government fields
- Collective work
- Class actions spanning consumer matters, labour and employment, product liability, false advertising, and antitrust and securities
- Adjacent strengths
- Commercial damages, accounting and valuation disputes, economics, intellectual property, international arbitration
- Reach
- Cross-border proceedings across multiple legal systems, including international arbitration
- Scope of engagement
- Expert strategy only. Ankura’s other practices sit outside this arrangement.
- Reference
- ankura.com
Two columns. One case file.
The division of labour is deliberately clean. Ankura decides what the case needs to prove and who is credible proving it. We make sure the claimant record can answer all of them from the same source.
Neither column reaches into the other. We do not opine on expert selection, and the panel is not shaped around what happens to be convenient in the data.
Participation infrastructure
The evidence base, end to end.
- One claimant record, maintained for the life of the case
- Evidence captured per claimant, to the panel’s specification
- Register extracts produced on schedule, in usable form
- Provenance and methodology for the register itself
- A written account of what the data cannot show
Expert strategy
The panel, end to end.
- Which expert disciplines the matter requires
- Expert selection and positioning for the forum
- Damages, accounting and economic analysis
- Expert reports, declarations and testimony
- Consistency across every opinion filed
Fig. 01 — the join. Column B states what has to be proved and by whom; column A makes one record answer all of it. The data specification is the only shared surface.
Stage by stage
The panel is decided early and instructed over months. What holds it together is a single data specification, written once and honoured by every extract that follows.
Stage 02 is the one that compounds.
A retrospective data request to a live register is the most expensive thing anyone can ask of it. Four separate ones, arriving a quarter apart, are worse than four times the cost.
Case design Participation strategy, and what the claimant record will realistically be able to hold. Which expert disciplines this matter actually needs, and which it does not.
Specification What can be captured at intake, at what cost, and what genuinely cannot. One consolidated data request covering every discipline on the panel.
Instruction A written statement of what the register holds, so an expert takes instruction with clear eyes. Sourcing and positioning the testifying experts for the forum and jurisdiction.
Analysis Register extracts produced to specification, on the timetable, from one source of truth. Analysis and opinion development across the disciplines in parallel.
Reports Provenance and methodology evidence for the register itself, where it is relied on. Expert reports and declarations, checked for consistency across the panel.
Hearing Participation-side facts produced on request, in the form the record requires. Testimony, cross-examination and the presentation of the evidence.
Ask the register once, for everything. Every later request costs more than the first.
Documents, not introductions
A joint engagement that produces nothing but a warm handshake is not worth publishing. These are the artefacts the joint engagement is designed to put on your desk.
Every opinion belongs to the expert who signed it, and is owed to the tribunal hearing it.
A testifying expert’s duty runs to the tribunal. Coordinating a panel means aligning the facts they work from, never the conclusions they reach. Mediatasks reports on what the register can and cannot evidence and takes no view on the opinions; the firms are separately engaged, with data-sharing terms agreed in writing.
Decided by the panel, not the mode
The partner register sits above the operating modes, not inside one. This entry is the one where the operating mode matters least — what decides it is how many disciplines the case has to prove.
One question settles it: does this matter need more than one expert? If it does, they should be chosen together.
CasePartners™
You hold the book. The panel’s data specification is tested against data that already exists rather than data still to be collected.
Read the mode →LeadPartners™
We build the book, so the panel’s requirements can be designed into the registration journey from the first question.
Read the mode →ArbPartners™
US mass arbitration, where the same expert analysis has to hold across thousands of individually filed claims.
Read the mode →- Jurisdiction
- Global, including cross-border proceedings spanning several legal systems and international arbitration.
- Case type
- Class and collective actions across consumer matters, labour and employment, product liability, false advertising, antitrust and securities.
- Best introduced
- At case design, before the first expert is instructed and before the registration journey is built.
- Also useful
- Where a panel is already part-instructed and the opinions need reconciling against one evidence base.
- Single-discipline matters
- A named specialist is usually the better answer. See competition economics or quantum & analytics.
Questions of substance
We choose our own experts.+
You should, and you will continue to. The useful part of this pairing is usually not who to instruct but the sequence and the shared evidence base — deciding what the whole panel will need from the register before the first expert asks for it.
How is this different from the competition economics entry?+
Depth against breadth. A named economist leads the economics of a competition case personally. Ankura is a bench across accounting, economics, mathematics and data science, for matters that need several disciplines held in line. On a case needing one opinion, the specialist is the better answer.
Does Mediatasks have any say in the expert evidence?+
None, and it should stay that way. We produce the register extracts an expert asks for and we state plainly where the data cannot support a question. That is a factual account of the evidence base, not a view on the opinion drawn from it.
Why does the data specification matter this much?+
Because asking a live register for something it was never designed to capture means going back to claimants. Doing that once is expensive. Doing it four times, once per expert, damages engagement as well as the budget — and engagement is what the whole programme is protecting.
What exactly is in scope?+
Expert strategy and expert evidence. Ankura is a broad firm with many other practices; those sit outside this pairing, and the specification states the boundary rather than leaving it to be discovered later.
How is the arrangement paid for?+
Each firm is paid for its own work, on terms agreed with you in writing before it begins. Neither firm pays the other for an introduction. The specification sets out the commercial basis in full.
Request the specification.
The joint specification sets out scope and its boundary, how the consolidated data specification is produced, expert independence, reporting, and the commercial basis in full. Sent as a PDF, no call required.
Request the specification
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