During my forensics elective the pathologists there were actually under contract with the various surrounding counties to testify in a set number of cases for one total fee. If they exceeded this number, then they were reimbursed further. There were a couple of times when one of them was asked to be an "expert witness" like yaah said, to refute another pathologist's findings and indeed then they were compensated. Also as one of them is a fairly well known cardiovascular pathologist, he took on some outside consult cases from around the country (they FedEx'ed an in the news heart... the poor Fed Ex guy was a little nervous to deliver anything to the forensics lab! 😉 ) on top of other things. HTH?