All work that an expert does for a case is billable, including travel time. However, experts will frequently provide discounted or even unbilled work for individuals in certain circumstances (like criminal cases where the expert is testing in a forensic capacity to counter improper forensic analysis presented by a prosecution expert).

Some experts charge for their time at a reduced rate (e.g. 50%) for travel, some a predetermined amount (taking the risk of delays on themselves), some only for the cost of the tickets, hotels, meals, etc.

There is, AFAIK and based on what I can Google, no universal answer.

> I guarantee that the recruitment process and negotiation process was more involved than a phone call.

I suppose, but do you think that was more than 9 hours? Because 9 hours is only 1% of their time.

It could easily be more than 9 hours. How many people spend longer than that interviewing for a technical position across five rounds? And this is for one of the few experts Samsung will put up to defend a $xxx million suit.

Plus, he works for MIT. He probably needs to clear his consulting work, which could be quick or not. MIT might have wanted a percentage. And if he wanted to use a grad student to assist him in prep work, negotiating that can add up too.

There are other ways to add to the precontract numbers, but that should be enough.

Nine hours per round times five rounds plus another nine hours to get clearance is still only 6%

And that's a huge number of hours for each round.

It's really hard to reach "a good chunk" when compared to 900 hours. I was considering saying 90 hours in my first post.

If MIT wants a cut that's a different issue, and I doubt negotiating that will take particularly long.