The American Academy of Economic and Financial Experts is a professional association of economists, finance academics, and accountants who serve as experts in litigation. It publishes the Journal of Legal Economics, a peer-reviewed journal on the measurement of damages in personal injury, wrongful death, employment, and commercial matters, including the discount rate, valuation, and lost profits questions that arise in business disputes, and it holds meetings at which practitioners present and critique methods. Like NAFE membership, academy membership signals participation in the field's professional discourse and is not a certification or an examination. Its value to counsel is the literature it curates: an economist who can point to the academy's journal for the method in a report has a published basis for it, and an opposing report that departs from that literature can be measured against it.
Academy membership is not a prerequisite for admission and does not by itself establish the reliability of an opinion. Its relevance to admissibility runs through the literature: an economist who can show that a discount rate approach, a valuation method, or a lost profits framework has been published, criticized, and refined in the academy's journal has a ready answer to whether the method has been tested and accepted by peers. The qualification inquiry still turns on the individual witness's training and experience and on the fit between the method and the facts of the case.
Both are membership associations for economists and financial experts in litigation, and many practitioners belong to both. NAFE publishes the Journal of Forensic Economics and maintains a formal ethics statement; the academy publishes the Journal of Legal Economics and convenes practitioners and academics around damages and valuation questions. Neither examines or certifies its members.
No. The academy does not test applicants or review their reports. Membership shows participation in the field; it does not attest to competence, and it should be weighed with the expert's education, methods, and testimony history.
Membership is an individual affiliation, and we confirm it per economist at engagement rather than advertising it. Our analyses follow the published standards of the forensic economics associations regardless of any individual membership, and we will tell you exactly which affiliations the economist assigned to your matter holds.
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