All good things must come to an end, and by October of last year it was clear to me that the time had come for me to retire after 18-plus years as senior case manager at Vident Partners. Under the circumstances, a brief retrospective seems in order.
In the spring of 2007, I had the great good fortune to meet Peter George and be invited to join him as a case manager at his company, then known as Healthcare Litigation Support. HLS focused almost exclusively on medical malpractice and personal injury litigation, and I had 30 years’ experience as a plaintiff’s attorney, so the job was a perfect fit for me. I worked diligently to grow our panel of experts and helped create a new database to accommodate that growth. In addition, several of my colleagues in the Rhode Island plaintiff’s bar became our clients.
HLS was acquired by Thomson Reuters in February 2011 as part of a new division, Thomson Reuters Expert Witness Services (TREWS), which provided experts for all types of litigation. As our workload increased at TREWS, Peter’s son Arie joined us as a case manager. In October 2013 our company found itself independent again. Given the more expansive range of litigation areas the HLS team had participated in under the TREWS umbrella, we decided to change the name of the new company to Vident Partners.
Peter, Arie and I have been a perfect team for a dozen years, and I’m proud of the role I’ve played in growing the business. It has been a particular pleasure to find, work with, and learn from the best experts in a wide variety of fields. I am grateful to them for educating me, and to Peter and Arie for being great partners who will continue to provide outstanding service to my clients.
Finally, I especially want to thank my clients for entrusting me with a crucial aspect of their work, namely, finding and cultivating expert witnesses. As I’ve often said, you do things every day that only a lawyer can do. Finding experts isn’t one of them – and it’s the only thing Vident Partners does. I thank and salute you for making my career in expert search and referral such a joy.
