Rashid Muhamedrahimov directs the Applied Research Center at Cornerstone Research, a multidisciplinary team that integrates specialized technical capabilities and new tools into Cornerstone Research’s economic analysis in support of high-stakes litigation.
With over a decade of experience in economic consulting, data science, and artificial intelligence (AI), Mr. Muhamedrahimov plays a leading role in how Cornerstone embeds advanced methodologies such as AI and machine learning, valuation tools, and behavioral science into its core analytical work.
Recently named a Rising Star of the Profession by Consulting Magazine, Mr. Muhamedrahimov discusses how ARC serves as a critical component in the firm’s broader framework for addressing the most technically demanding legal challenges.
1. You joined Cornerstone to help launch and lead the Applied Research Center (ARC). What is ARC’s mandate within the context of high-stakes litigation?
ARC is a multidisciplinary team of specialists, each bringing deep expertise in technical and subject matter areas such as surveys, machine learning, valuation, securities, labor, and mergers.
The Center operates with a dual mandate.
First, we provide specialist support for active cases, working alongside Cornerstone’s consulting teams to help deliver innovative, high-quality, and impactful work for our clients.
Second, we drive dedicated R&D to create novel tools, methods, and workflows for consulting teams to apply in casework. Our R&D allows the firm to elevate how we execute our work, enabling us to conduct faster and more robust, compelling analyses under the compressed timelines of litigation.
In addition, ARC significantly expands the talent pool that we can attract to the firm. The Center provides an alternative career path that brings in professionals from a wide range of backgrounds not typically seen in economic consulting firms. ARC’s structure empowers them to contribute their unique skills to cases, grow in their careers, and play meaningful roles in the firm.
2. How does the ARC specialist model work on client cases?
Our specialists deploy flexibly onto cases, as and when they are needed. For example, if a case team is helping to rebut a particularly complex statistical model, an ARC specialist will join the team and work alongside them to support and execute the analysis. This involvement can last for the entire duration of a matter or just a brief phase, depending on the nature and complexity of the work.
A key driver of our model’s effectiveness is our team’s sharp alignment with both client needs and consulting dynamics. We believe that combining strong consulting acumen with advanced technical skills allows our specialist work to deliver maximum impact.
The litigation space carries unique demands, including the nuances of expert testimony, budget constraints, and tight timelines. Our specialists understand exactly how a specific methodology may play out in court and how to unpack technical issues in a way that is both precise and practical.
Many ARC team members first developed their specialist skills as consultants at Cornerstone or other firms. Several also have experience from adjacent fields, notably the technology sector, where they served as economists and data scientists at leading companies. I am delighted to work with such a strong, versatile team and deeply value the diverse range of experiences they all bring.
From a client perspective, ARC’s integration is entirely seamless. Clients can trust that they will always receive the highest quality service from the most qualified team. There is no need to manage staffing decisions or request extra help; whenever a case requires specialized expertise, ARC specialists are brought in automatically.
3. Given Cornerstone’s leadership in leveraging AI across its practices, how do you see these technologies transforming the day-to-day work of economic consultants?
AI makes a wide range of our tasks more efficient, but the effect is not uniform. For some tasks, greater efficiency simply frees up time: document review finishes faster, and that time is spent elsewhere. For others, it changes what we choose to do at all: when a task becomes less expensive, we do more of it. This distinction matters, because our ability to explore benefits from both effects at once. Time freed from routine work flows toward new lines of analysis, and exploration itself—once a major investment that was difficult to justify under tight litigation deadlines—becomes cost-effective enough to undertake far more often. We are experiencing a step change in our ability to examine the questions in a case more broadly and more deeply, and it is hard to overstate how much that helps our experts to deliver more defensible reports.
I want to stress that none of this implies that AI is a perfect, error-free substitute for the work of experienced staff. It is fast and it speaks with total authority, yet it can be wrong in subtle, easy-to-miss ways. Consequently, human judgment and deep domain knowledge are more critical than ever. When anyone can generate an answer in minutes, the real value lies in having an expert who can distinguish a correct insight from a confidently delivered error.
Ultimately, my read is that AI raises the ceiling on what expert analysis can achieve, but that potential is only realized when individuals with the right expertise and judgment are guiding the technology. To truly embed AI capabilities at Cornerstone, we place a premium on active leadership engagement. We treat leadership awareness and hands-on embrace of AI as a vital strategic priority rather than a nice-to-have—a commitment that serves as the essential keystone for scaling these tools across the firm.
4. Innovation is often a buzzword, but ARC treats R&D as a formal pillar. How does this focus benefit clients?
Most consulting firms innovate. But they tend to do so ad hoc in the gaps between deadlines. In my experience, the most valuable ideas usually require more dedicated time than a busy case schedule allows.
Establishing R&D as a formal function enables us to invest in long-term projects that benefit multiple matters, rather than only the immediate case at hand. This is an approach we have successfully used for some time across both our Data Science Center and ARC, and I am excited to further accelerate our R&D focus moving forward.
For clients, the R&D focus delivers value in two ways.
First is timing: when a case requires an advanced methodology on deadline, the underlying tools are already built and fully tested. We can deploy them immediately rather than developing them from scratch mid-matter. Our document-review tools are a prime example of this approach―the firm has established workflows that run structured analysis across massive document sets, so teams can execute analyses that would have been impossible under standard litigation timelines just a few years ago.
Second is the compounding value of these developments. The tools and methods we build are not one-off solutions to be shelved after a single use; they carry over into the next case, and the one after that. Over time, we continually refine and enhance these capabilities, expanding the depth and sophistication of what we can deliver to our clients.
5. Looking to the future, how do you see ARC’s capabilities evolving to address new legal challenges?
A major shift lies in how advancements in AI and technology will affect the matters themselves, both in terms of the case issues in dispute and the methodologies used to analyze them.
As companies integrate AI into their daily operations, and analysis increasingly incorporates AI methods, litigation raises novel questions. For instance, how do you defend an analysis that relied on a machine learning model or demonstrate that the analysis is sufficiently replicable to survive a Daubert challenge? Courts are still navigating these issues, which require a holistic understanding of economics, statistics, and technology rather than viewing them in silos. That convergence is a natural fit for ARC, and I expect an increasing share of our work to focus there.
To stay ahead of these trends, we will continue building our technology and AI expertise, while continuously evolving our core economics and finance capabilities alongside these new analytical methods.
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