How Experts Gain Respect: Oil & Gas Expert Witness Jon Marshall

In this episode of The Expert Witness Podcast, host David Smith sits down with Jon Marshall, mechanical engineer, MBA, and oil and gas expert witness at Alpine Engineering & Design. Over a 19-year career in product development, Jon has been listed as an inventor on 77 published patents and helped bring major drilling technologies to market, including Schlumberger’s NeoSteer rotary steerable tool.

Jon shares three practical principles that help experts earn respect and credibility in high-stakes environments, from engineering teams and job sites to depositions and trial testimony: confidence with respect, being willing to say “I don’t know,” and persuasive communication that connects with non-technical audiences.

Watch the full interview below, or listen on Spotify if you prefer audio.

Use the timestamps below to find a specific section of the conversation.

• 01:56 — How to gain respect as an expert
• 03:12 — Principle 1: Be confident, but respectful
• 04:38 — What not to do when credibility is challenged
• 11:58 — Principle 2: Learn to say “I don’t know”
• 15:48 — Principle 3: Master persuasive communication
• 18:38 — Translating complex ideas into clear communication
• 24:49 — Final thoughts: Jon’s three credibility principles
• 25:06 — How to contact Jon / Alpine Engineering & Design

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• Credibility isn’t just expertise. It’s how you carry it: confident, respectful, and grounded in evidence.
• Strong experts protect their credibility by knowing their limits and saying “I don’t know” when appropriate.
• The best technical experts can translate complex ideas clearly for attorneys, juries, and decision-makers, and do it with human presence, not “robot mode.”

David Smith (00:03):

All right. Welcome to the Expert Witness Podcast. I am your host, David Smith, and I’m here today with Jon Marshall. Jon has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA. Over his 19 year career, he has been listed as an inventor on seventy seven published patents and has many successful product releases. Much of his experience has been in the oil and gas industry, developing new drilling tools for Schlumberger. If anyone listening is familiar with the industry, one of his most successful products is the rotary steerable tool, called NeoSteer, that you can find on Schlumberger’s website. And I think we’ll hear a little bit more about that today. Jon, thank you for joining us.

Jon Marshall (00:50):

Thank you. I’m glad to be here. And thanks for the invite. It’s been a pleasure so far to work here at Alpine Engineering and Design, and I’m excited to share a few gems that I’ve picked up over the years.

David Smith (01:04):

That’s great. I’m excited to hear your thoughts on our subject today, which is how an expert gains respect from those he works with. Here at Alpine Engineering we have a lot of experience in both product development and expert witness litigation work. You clearly have expertise in product development, and though you’re just getting your feet wet in the litigation side, I have noticed as we’ve interacted, that you have instilled many of the same skills that I’ve seen are necessary for success as an expert witness. So I think what you have to say will be very applicable and interesting to the experts in product development and in litigation. So the question that I want to talk about today is how do you gain respect as an expert?

Jon Marshall (01:56):

Well, obviously you can’t just pretend to be an expert. You really have to put in the time, the educational requirements and the real world experience in order to be an expert in your field. But assuming that we’re talking to people who are already experts and would hope to gain some additional respect for their expertise, I have three important things that I thought we could talk about today. The first one is the importance of being confident, but also respectful to those around you. Most people that we interact with are experts in their own field or their own environment, and we need to respect that. Then they will instill or show that same respect to us. Though it is kind of difficult to always feel confident when you don’t really look the part.

David Smith (03:09):

What do you mean look the part?

Jon Marshall (03:12):

Well, I’ve always looked quite a bit younger than I really am, which some people would think was a really nice thing to have, especially as you get older. But having a few gray hairs is really nice in some circumstances. I think back when I was about 10 years into my career working with Schlumberger, I remember going to this rig. We were doing a test for a tool that we had been developing. At this point in my career, I was leading a group of about 35 individuals, both engineers and machinists and testing personnel, and had probably 40 patents to my name. I think I had the experience and expertise to be respected by others. But when you walk in and the driller, who later told me that he thought I looked 20 years old; it’s just hard to immediately invoke the respect that you would hope for in that situation.

David Smith (04:21):

Yeah, I totally understand that, and I’ve been there. So when you get into a situation like that, what have you found that is helpful in gaining the respect of the other people in the room or on the site?

Jon Marshall (04:38):

First I’ll say what not to do. I don’t think it’s effective or helpful to get defensive or tout your credentials or try to use big impressive words to impress someone. Especially someone like a driller who just isn’t impressed with stuff like that. I needed his help to make sure that I was successful in this test. And it was really important that we did what we set out to do. Let me just give a little background. We had been developing this tool for several years and probably spent several million dollars trying to get this tool to the point where we could launch it as a product. And in the oil and gas industry, they’re very cautious, both for safety and just cost for the customer. When you introduce a new tool and something breaks, it’s sometimes days of taking the tool back out of the hole trying to troubleshoot it.

Jon Marshall (05:53):

And they just don’t have patience for that. So you really have to know that your tool’s gonna work. We had done all sorts of testing before, and at this point we were just supposed to go there and put it down a hole in a real drilling rig and make sure that it actually did what all of our previous tests said it already did. So I really needed him to be engaged and excited and not skeptical the whole time and questioning everything we were doing, and put forth his best effort. I had seen other projects die at this point, even though you had good data previously. If you get to this point and you fail, often they would just cut the project feeling that it really wasn’t gonna work. So to get back to your question, if you really want to gain respect in a situation like that, you have to demonstrate both your confidence and your respect for the other person in the course of working together.

Jon Marshall (06:59):

In this case it happened quite early in the process. We had just installed the tool in the drill rig, tightened up the joints, and started the pumps. The tool worked in such a way where if you varied the flow in a specific order, it should respond. There was a physical reaction to that response where we should be able to visually see that the tool was working. We went through that process and nothing happened. He did it a couple more times and nothing happened. At this point I’m kind of freaking out wondering what could possibly have gone wrong. Of course he’s thinking there’s something wrong with the tool and he’s looking at me like, “I knew that you didn’t know what you were doing.” “This little kid that came onto my rig.” I also knew that he wasn’t too excited to be there in the first place.

Jon Marshall (07:56):

We had started in the evening and he needed to stay up all night to do this test. I’m sure he would’ve been happy to go home to his bed. So he wasn’t very motivated to make sure that we figured out what was going on, and to move forward with the test. I took a few deep breaths and thought through everything that was going on. I knew I had assembled everything correctly because I had done it myself. I had someone there with me and we had gone through everything twice to make sure. It really wasn’t that complex of a mechanism. There was no reason for that to have occurred. All the evidence was pointing to something wrong with the rig, which is a really difficult thing for me to go and tell this guy. He was the expert on this rig and there was something wrong with his rig.

Jon Marshall (08:50):

I knew I had to. Based on my own expertise, I knew this tool. I had designed this tool and built this tool and tested this tool, though I was not an expert at drill rigs. There was evidence, physics, that dictated that there was no way that my tool was at fault. I just had to barrel through, hoping that I wouldn’t lose all the credibility I had with this guy if I somehow was wrong. So I confidently asked him to double check and make sure that he hadn’t accidentally left open a bypass valve, because the evidence showed that the only way this should be happening is that the pressure wasn’t high enough in the tool to activate it. This was the only thing I could think of that could be happening.

Jon Marshall (09:56):

The flow rate should have been such that the tool should have been activated. So I kindly asked him to please double check. With an eye roll he said he would do it, and he went off. I remember sitting there for 10 minutes or so. As I waited for him to come back I was thinking, “Man, this is the worst test. I’m gonna go home and look embarrassed. My boss is gonna be embarrassed. We had spent so much money, and if I was wrong.” I still remember the look on his face, and his body language, as he came back with this sheepish expression saying, “yes, I did leave the bypass valve open. I don’t know how that happened. We don’t ever do that. But you were right.” I could have said “I told you so”, but to make the respect mutual, I just graciously thanked him for not giving up on me and on the tool. From then on, we had a great experience together. His condescending attitude completely disappeared.

David Smith (11:08):

Thank you for sharing that story. I can picture that whole interaction, you know, being able to say, “Hey, you are wrong” in a way that doesn’t make you or them look like a jerk, is really an underrated skill for an expert, particularly in a trial setting where often the way that you present something is just as important as what you are actually presenting. So that’s a great tool and tip. You said confidence with respect was the first of three things to gain respect. What’s the second thing in your toolbox?

Jon Marshall (11:58):

The second thing would be to learn how to say, “I don’t know.”

David Smith (12:05):

So an expert saying, “I don’t know”, sounds a little counterintuitive. Can you give us a little more information on what you mean?

Jon Marshall (12:13):

Yeah, it does feel a little funny to say that. But I’m sure all of us have seen how poorly, and how quickly, someone loses respect from everyone around them when they start exaggerating their expertise, or just lie about what they actually know. I had an experience with this person I was working for as an intern who was a very smart guy. He was the type of guy who would take textbooks with him to Hawaii and read them on the beach while he was sunbathing. He just loved learning and he loved experimenting. He built his own plane in his garage. He loved all sorts of things, and he had so much wisdom. I learned all sorts of good principles from him. At first I just took everything he said as gospel truth.

Jon Marshall (13:13):

I just applied it. I thought he was the best. But after a few months, I realized how many people griped about him and didn’t like him; the other engineers in the office. I was trying to figure out why, and I started noticing when he was not telling the truth. As an intern it’s hard to recognize that, when you don’t know anything. But after a while I saw him doing all these little lies all the time. If someone brought up a subject, he would just pretend to know all sorts of things about that. He would say things like, “they always do it that way”, and you’d ask him who “they” were and he wouldn’t know. He had all these funny phrases that he would use when he started to lie.

Jon Marshall (14:01):

I started to pick up on that. Though he had so much good information, it was difficult to know when he was lying and when he was telling the truth. I just couldn’t handle it after a while. You have to go find someone who will tell you a straight answer if you really want to know something. I think anytime we are in a situation where we are asked if we know a subject, the best thing to do if we don’t is just to say, “no, I don’t know that subject.” “I don’t know the answer.” “I know this and I could research that for you.” But to try to lie and assume that you know more, you instantly lose the respect of everyone around you.

David Smith (14:52):

Yeah, absolutely. It’s so important, particularly in this field, to know what your limits are and to not present yourself as an expert in things that you know nothing about. The attorneys that retained you want to know where your expertise is and isn’t, and if they have to bring someone else in to cover something, they want to know that well ahead of time rather than once they get to trial. And so being able to say “that’s outside of my scope” or “I don’t really know the answer to that at this point” is something that’s critically important to a good expert. So the first two points have been pretty dead on, I think. What do you consider is your final point in gaining respect?

Jon Marshall (15:48):

The final point I would make is a soft skill, like the two previous; honesty and trying to treat people nicely. This one is persuasive communication. I see it as two things. One is, as an expert we tend to use jargon and big vocabulary words. Their purpose is to help communication between two people who share the same background, the same expertise. But when you start to talk to an audience of lawyers, or common people, and you start using big words that they don’t understand, this isn’t a way to gain respect. If anything, it reduces their respect for you. And that’s the last thing you want to do. I think that a huge part of persuasive communication is to use words that people understand.

Jon Marshall (16:45):

The other part is to not be a robot. Often as engineers, as people who are very technical and very logic based, we think that everyone will be so excited about our conclusions if we systematically lay out the logic. But if we do it in such a way that is unrelatable to the people around us, then we either lose their attention or it’s hard for them to feel persuaded by someone who is not showing any emotion or excitement about what they’re talking about. We need to be comfortable showing our emotions and using persuasion when we’re sharing our opinions.

David Smith (18:03):

Yeah, that’s great. I remember there’s a quote, I don’t remember who said this quote, but they said, people buy based on emotion and justify it based on logic. And so if you can’t appeal to their emotion at some point in your presentation, then oh, sorry, they’re not gonna buy your story. So that’s great. Can you give us an example of where persuasive communication helped you gain respect in your field?

Jon Marshall (18:38):

Yeah. When I first started working with Schlumberger, it was really awesome that I got to interact with some experts in their field. One of them was a rotary steerable system expert that had done this his whole career. He was a really great guy and I really enjoyed working with him over the years. I observed him attempt to explain some of his concepts and ideas of what the next step-change in oil and gas drilling technology was. He could talk to a whole room of engineers and we’d all be lost and we wouldn’t know what he was talking about. He would just be throwing up equation after equation, not explaining himself, and then using these vocabulary words that I wasn’t familiar with.

Jon Marshall (19:39):

Maybe some of the other guys were familiar, but just coming into it, it was overwhelming. I remember sitting down with him for several hours, asking him question after question, trying to boil down what he was really talking about, to pull out some principles that I could apply to a new design. I came away from that meeting with a few key things that he believed would help, and I was able to apply those to a solution. It ended up being a pretty simple solution, but it was something that they had never considered before. I really was excited that I’d come up with something that I thought would really work, but I was quite intimidated, because I had just watched him present to this group of people, which was the same group I needed to present to in order to fund the project and get buy-in so that I could continue.

Jon Marshall (20:42):

There were about six senior engineers and business representatives in this steering committee for the group that I was working in. They never seemed excited about what he was talking about. I thought, maybe they just don’t like rotary steerable systems. Maybe they just think it’s a stupid thing to work on. But when I went into the presentation, I had made a detailed 3D model of what I had in mind and created some pretty clear slides, I was amazed. When I started going through these slides, and I explained exactly how it worked and how it related to all the principles that this expert had been talking to us about, they got so excited.

Jon Marshall (21:42):

I was amazed. I saw this over and over throughout my career, but this was the first time where I realized how powerful it was that I was able to boil something down in a way that the whole audience could understand. Nobody was lost, and nobody was trying to figure out what that equation meant. I think one of the most persuasive things that an expert can do is boil something down that is difficult. To an understandable way that anybody can understand. I think that’s what true expertise should enable. Not that we only can talk to those who are familiar with it, but that we can talk to anybody about it. I think we can do this, by using appropriate vocabulary words or defining those words, and then getting excited and showing it in a concise way.

Jon Marshall (22:47):

That meeting led to a really successful product, you mentioned it at the beginning, it’s called Neo Steer. If you go to Schlumberger’s website, they touted it as a step change rotary steerable system and that it’s the most advanced and effective steering tool on the market. And it all started in that meeting when I was able to boil something down and present it for a group, so they could get behind it, instead of wondering what I was talking about. I think that’s what it really means to have persuasive presentations or communication.

David Smith (23:36):

Oh, that’s great. And that’s a couple of those principles that have come up fairly often in these interviews that we do. The idea of de jargoning or taking all the technical terms out and explaining it with layman’s terms. It can be really difficult to do when you’re talking about something that’s very technical. Being able to do that, like you said, is a mark of true expertise. And then being able to present with a little bit of passion, a little bit of true belief in what you’re talking about definitely helps the audience understand what you’re doing, and where you are going with your opinions. So that’s all great. I agree with everything that you’re saying. And to sum up, your three suggestions for experts to help greatly gain credibility, are confident with respect, don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know”, and using persuasive communication

Jon Marshall (24:49):

That’s right. I really believe doing those things will really help experts in all their communications and really establish good rapport and respect with those people that they live and work with.

David Smith (25:06):

Great. Well, Jon, thank you for being here. Thank you for discussing how to gain respect as an expert witness. Now assuming someone listening might need your expertise in the oil and gas industry or some of your other experiences, what’s the best way for someone to get in contact with you?

Jon Marshall (25:29):

Yeah, it’s pretty easy. Just go to alpineeng.com and you can look at my CV and see what projects might be in line with what you need, or just call our office, (801) 763-8484 and ask for Jon. I’d be happy to discuss any design challenge or litigation case that really fits in my niche.

David Smith (25:59):

All right, Jon. Thanks. Thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate you being here and taking the time out of your day and sharing your stories with us. I know I’ve enjoyed it and hopefully everyone else has as well.

Jon Marshall (26:12):

Thank you very much. It’s been great to be here.

Jon Marshall is a mechanical engineer and MBA with 19 years of experience in product development and engineering leadership. Over his career, Jon has been listed as an inventor on 77 published patents and supported the development and release of multiple successful products in the oil and gas industry, including Schlumberger’s NeoSteer rotary steerable tool.

Today, Jon serves as an oil and gas expert witness with Alpine Engineering & Design. His background spans complex mechanical systems, testing and troubleshooting in real-world field conditions, and the kind of technical communication required to explain engineering concepts clearly in professional and legal settings.

• Learn more about Jon’s background on our Our Experts
• Explore Alpine Engineering’s Oil & Gas Expert Witness services

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