The Litigation Consulting Report

We write here frequently about the importance of using visual evidence in trials and indeed in all sorts of other legal forums. But technology is not the be-all and end-all of persuasion. It is a very useful tool, but the importance of technology does not lessen the need to tell a convincing story to a jury or another decisionmaker. In fact, if courtroom technology is not deployed correctly, presenting visuals to a judge or jury can detract from one’s message rather than enhance it. In other words, figuring out who will be victorious at trial is not simply a matter of determining who is using litigation graphics and who is not. Any trial is ultimately about how each side can use its graphics to support an effective story. Technology-based graphics, therefore, should not be used to make up for the trial skills a lawyer lacks, but rather to enhance the skills he or she already possesses. The type of technological visual is another variable to consider when presenting an argument. Some research has suggested that depending on the case, different types of technology-based graphics can have different persuasive effects on the jury. For example, researchers compared a computer simulation of an air crash, an audiotape with written transcript of a cockpit voice recorder, and a speaker reading the cockpit voice recorder, and asked people to decide whether they believed there was a pilot error based on the evidence to which they had been exposed. The researchers found that jurors who were shown the computer animation believed the flight crew to be significantly less negligent that the other jurors who did not. Animations are so powerful because they can take us to places human beings cannot go. But even without animations, simple PowerPoint slides can be quite effective in advancing your narrative if done right.

It is unquestioned that technology has had a profound impact on our environment in the last couple of decades. Our brains are constantly adapting at a physical level to our environment, and research has suggested that technology has changed the way we perceive, remember, and process information. Not much has yet been said, however, about how technology has changed the ways in which jurors process information and the appropriate new styles that trial lawyers ought to use in presenting information to a jury. The growth of the internet, 24-hour television, and mobile phones means that we now receive five times as much information every day as we did 30 years ago. With the appropriate internet connection, technology allows us to access any information in less than a second. According to Internet Live Stats (2014), 88.5 percent of people in the United States are internet users. In addition, the internet has also changed the way we as a society process information. For example, when we read a book we do so linearly, from one sentence to another, but when using multimedia devices, we scan for keywords and grab small bits of relevant information. The internet has influenced people’s cognition in a way which they will now typically forego complex analytic thinking to get information quickly and easily. In other words, people allow the internet or even their smartphones to think for them. As a result, it is much harder to sustain attention, to think about one thing for an extended period, and to think deeply when new stimuli have been pouring in all day long. This is not to say that technology has negatively impacted our brain. Instead, the excess amount of information at our fingertips has changed the way we process large amounts of information and specifically, what information engages our attention.