The 2026 Bond Solon and Law Society Gazette Expert Witness survey asked expert witnesses whether they had felt pressure from an instructing party to modify their opinion. About seven in ten had felt it at least rarely in the previous year. Some respondents also described instructions that appeared designed to shape the opinion. That part rang true for me. By the time someone asks an expert to change a figure, a good deal may already have been decided by the questions they were given.
Two experts can look at the same classic car and produce different valuations. Before comparing their figures, I would read the questions they were asked. One might have been asked what the car could fetch at a trade auction at short notice. The other might have been asked what it would sell for if properly marketed. Each figure could be reasonable on its own terms. Put them side by side without the instructions and they can look like different answers to the same question. It is a common issue in Proceeds of Crime valuations, where the Crown Prosecution Service wants a high number and defence solicitors want a low one, as sentencing can depend on the numbers.
I work up to the question. I start with the car, the market it would actually sell in and the circumstances of the sale. Then I look at what the instruction asks me to assume and what falls outside it. A narrow question can be perfectly proper. Sometimes a fact is disputed and the solicitor needs to know what the car would be worth on a particular assumption. The difficulty comes when the assumption is doing most of the work and the scope leaves no room to explain that.
I’ve been taken off cases after questioning the scope, and I’ve walked away from others because the scope wouldn’t let me give an opinion I could stand behind. Sometimes I’ve already done enough work to see the problem and that time goes unpaid. The same thing happens with private owners. After a fire destroys a collectable car, an owner may already have a figure in mind. If the evidence won’t support it, I say so. That can be the end of the conversation.
An expert’s independence can be tested before there is a report or even a figure. The first test may be whether the expert is prepared to say that the question, as framed, will give a narrower answer than the case needs. Sometimes the expert who says that is the one whose report never gets written.
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