In the Hot Seat With Our Testifying Experts:

Jennifer Prager, CPA, CFE, CVA, ABV, MAFF

How does your role as an expert support attorneys with their case strategy?

Within our firm, we highly value our collaboration, but our collaboration isn’t limited to just those within Morones Analytics. We also really appreciate collaborating with our attorney clients.

Frequently, our clients are provided a story from their client—from the ultimate client—about what happened. When we receive the financial records, we can help the attorney to understand what’s supportable in the client’s story or perhaps what documents might exist that we could request to support the client’s story.

But it’s also important for us to provide the feedback to the clients if we’re discovering parts of what we’re being told that are not supportable.

And so, we can help the attorney to understand the financial issues so that they can make the best decisions for their legal strategy.

How do you break down complex issues to help a judge or jury understand them?

There are some cases that are just very challenging in the sense that there are lots of different data sets or different pieces of data. There might be emails, other contemporaneous records that were provided.

So, in order for me to tell a clear and concise story to a jury, I need to understand the story myself.

For me, it’s trying to take all those disparate pieces of data or emails or correspondence or whatever it is and understanding how they fit together— basically, what was going on in real time at the time that these events were occurring so that I can then tell that story to the judge or the jury and it will make sense to them.

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Jennifer Prager, CPA, CFE, CVA, ABV, MAFF has specialized in financial damages analysis and forensic accounting for 20+ years. She is a testifying expert who brings deep experience at CPA firms and on large forensic cases in Portland and San Francisco. Attorneys turn to Jennifer for a thorough financial analysis so they can enter trial or mediation with a credible calculation.