Attorneys - Lawyers Consultants: 18

John D. O'Connor has more than 40 years of experience dealing with complex Attorney Fee Disputes. He is a member of the National Association of Legal Fee Analysis (NALFA) and is recognized as one of the top legal fee experts in the country.

Mr. O’Connor has tried over 70 cases in federal and state venues throughout the country, with highly enviable success in complex, contentious disputes. Retained by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company as trial counsel in key cases, he has achieved a pretrial dismissal in each concluded action. He has held the highest Martindale-Hubbell “AV” rating for over 25 years, and has consistently been named a “SuperLawyer” by his Northern California peers.

A former Federal Prosecutor, Mr. O’Connor was chosen lead outside counsel in certain S&L crisis litigation, defended a California Attorney General in campaign-related litigation, and successfully represented Golden State Warriors basketball Coach Don Nelson in significant contract claims.

Litigation Support - Since the advent in the late 1980’s of adversarial legal auditing, Mr. O’Connor has served extensively as an expert, litigator, and JAMS mediator throughout the country, analyzing audit criticisms, applying community standards, and construing applicable case law. Through written Declaration and oral testimony, he has consulted on hundreds of adversarial legal fee disputes over three decades. Mr. O'Connor's work has been widely lauded by clients, lawyers, courts, and arbitrators.

Areas of Attorney Fee Dispute Expertise:

• Billing Rates / Overbilling
• Litigation Efficiency
• Task Assignment and Staffing
• Prevailing Party Determination
• Litigation Skill

Sandman Legal P.C. is the only law firm with a focus on the needs of the expert witness community. Their founder is a practicing attorney, licensed to practice law in California and Illinois, with 20 years of legal experience and a deep understanding of the expert witness and medical expert witness industry. After nearly a decade of experience in multiple executive leadership capacities, including five years as president for the nation's leading medical expert witness consulting firm, he left to pursue his long-time goal and launched Sandman Legal P.C., a provider of legal and dispute resolution services to the expert witness community and beyond.

Consulting Services for Expert Witnesses:

• Contract Review and Drafting
• Fee Schedule Review and Drafting
• Resolution of Disputes Specific to the Expert Witness Industry
• Insurance Policy Review and Consulting
• General Counsel Services

Dan Sandman, Esq., is an attorney, business executive, and founder of Sandman Legal P.C. He is respected for his education, experience, and commitment to his clients. Dan is energized by empowering individuals and teams, developing successful operational models, maximizing client relationships, and delivering unsurpassed business growth for individuals and legal services organizations in the expert witness space. Dan possesses a blend of experience working to grow private equity-backed companies, public service organizations, and individually owned businesses.

Dan's business leadership includes a focus on building coalitions with administrative agencies, increasing visibility for public campaigns, and advising individuals and executive teams on business and legal issues to mitigate risk. Additionally, he has held several board leadership positions and related affiliations in the legal profession and in the public sector.

Medical Expert Witness Retainers, Contracts, and Insurance with Dan Sandman, Esq - PGD

Most recently, Dan furthered his legal education at the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, Caruso School of Law at Pepperdine University. He successfully completed the certificate program entitled Mediating the Litigated Case, the number one mediation program in the nation. Dan's focus as a certified mediator is on business disputes, personal injury matters, employment cases, medical malpractice, and community-based issues.

William (Ned) McLeod, Esq., has been a party to many Licensing Arrangements as an attorney specializing in Intellectual Property in the Entertainment Industry (“IP”), both on the licensor and the licensee side of the table in different matters from hard media historical archives to blockchain to casino resorts and rides, and, as a non-attorney producer, both as owner  licensor and, alternately, as user / licensee.

As a result of his more than 40 years in the Entertainment Industry, Mr. McLeod has personally negotiated hundreds of licenses, and reviewed and evaluated hundreds more. His handling of licenses have covered a broad scope of venues and clientele, including The Rockefeller Center (NYC), the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry and The Navy Pier (IL), the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History (TX, with 8 associated museums), Graceland (TN), Niagara Falls (NY), The Smithsonian, the Kennedy Space Center (FL), Port of Los Angeles (CA), National Harbor (DC), Leadership Conference of Women Religious (“Catholic Sisters,” MD), the Tupperware Center (FL), Gatorland (FL), the Orlando Ballet (FL), Bob Ross (painter), Cousteau family ventures, Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade (live and televised-7yrs), Paramount Pictures and others.    

Consulting Services -  Mr. McLeod has been most effective serving the long term needs of someone unfamiliar with the entertainment trade. He helps teams :

• Reach a level of confidence in designing their venture step by step, through option and decision tree outlines, developing from content creation over a span of five years or more and identifying the desired stages of achievement for the work.
• Take a book idea through publication, licensing to media and exhibition platforms, and attaching merchandise and educational products that build out sustainable and successful models of exploitation, with seats for sequels.
•  Tent-polling a major artistic creation (e.g., a painting, graphic/comic series, story, song, a Non-Fungible Token item, or a celebrity or major film studio brand), and designing the alliances and partnerships necessary for funding and moving to concentric wheels of ancillary and subsidiary derived products, experiences, resort properties and performances - all leading to revenue sharing.

View Ned McLeod's Expert Witness Profile.