As an expert in this field, I have written extensively about the power and potential of trial graphics. It is reassuring to know that the New York Times also recognizes the capabilities of compelling graphics, even though their application may differ from the courtroom trial graphics setting.
Kenneth J. Lopez, J.D.
Recent Posts
As a trial lawyer, your main goal is to persuade the judge or jury that your client’s side of the story is the most compelling one. One of the most effective ways to do this is through trial graphics. These visual aids can help you convey complex information in a way that is easy to understand and memorable. In this article, we’ll explore the science of storytelling and how trial graphics can help you tell a compelling narrative. The Power of Storytelling Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years. From cave paintings to novels, stories have always played an essential role in our lives. But why do we love stories so much? The answer lies in our brain. Research has shown that when we hear a story, our brain releases dopamine, a chemical associated with pleasure and reward. This makes us feel good and helps us remember the information better. In addition to making us feel good, stories also help us make sense of the world around us. They provide a framework for understanding complex information and help us remember important details. This is why stories are such a powerful tool in the courtroom.
Mock trials are valuable tools for trial attorneys and legal teams to prepare for litigation. These simulated trials allow lawyers to test their case theories, strategies, and arguments before presenting them in a real courtroom. By mimicking the trial process, mock trials provide an opportunity to identify strengths and weaknesses, refine arguments, and gain valuable insights. In this article, I will explore the top 10 tips for a successful mock trial in litigation. 1. Define Clear Objectives: Before commencing a mock trial, it is crucial to establish clear objectives. Determine what you aim to achieve through the exercise. Whether it's testing case theories, assessing witness credibility, or refining opening and closing statements, having well-defined goals will help structure the trial effectively. 2. Assemble a Diverse Mock Trial Team: Form a diverse team that includes attorneys, paralegals, and other litigation support staff. Each member should bring a unique perspective to the table, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation of the case. Diverse backgrounds and expertise will help identify potential blind spots and strengthen your overall trial strategy. 3. Recruit Mock Jurors: Recruiting mock jurors who closely resemble the demographics of your anticipated jury pool is essential. This will provide a realistic representation of how your case may be perceived by the actual jurors. Use professional jury consultants, like those at Persuadius, to find suitable participants.
In the midst of the chaotic election season, we find ourselves bombarded with a barrage of carefully crafted visuals designed to manipulate our thoughts and influence our political leanings. These persuasive graphics, created both domestically and internationally, have a singular purpose: to sway us towards a particular bias, be it left or right. They flood our social media feeds, tempting us to join in the frenzy and share them without a second thought. However, as discerning Americans, it is our duty to pause and reflect before mindlessly contributing to the spread of misinformation.
Throughout the past decade, our blog has been a platform for sharing a wide range of topics that have sparked many conversations across the litigation industry. With nearly 700 posts published, we understand that searching for a specific article can be a daunting task. That's why we've taken the initiative to compile these articles into directories based on topic, providing easy access to related content. Recently, we've also highlighted our top 100 pieces from the past ten years. We're confident that this directory will prove to be a valuable resource for you in exploring and discovering our content.
Our blog has been thriving for nearly a decade, accumulating over a million visits during this remarkable period. As we approach the official 10-year blog anniversary next year, we also celebrate the impressive 28-year milestone of our entire company. To stay in tune with our readers' preferences, we meticulously monitor the traffic of each blog post, enabling us to identify the crème de la crème. Without further ado, here are the top 100 most engaging blog posts from the past ten extraordinary years. 5 Questions to Ask in Voir Dire The Top 14 Testimony Tips for Litigators and Expert Witnesses Ways to Identify the Jury Foreman: Insights on Leadership and Influence Lists of Analogies, Metaphors and Idioms for Lawyers 14 Tips for Delivering a Great Board Meeting Presentation 15 Tips for Great Customer Service from the Restaurant Industry
and Dan Regard, CEO/Founder, iDS As seasoned litigation consultants with law degrees, Dan (a testifying forensics expert and CEO) and Ken (a trial consultant, trial graphics expert, and CEO) have witnessed firsthand the striking distinctions between expert witness graphics and trial graphics. While these graphic types may appear similar, these types of graphics serve entirely different purposes in the legal realm. Let's delve into seven ways in which expert witness graphics and trial graphics diverge: 1. Inform vs. Persuade. Expert witness graphics are meticulously crafted to illustrate expert testimony, whereas trial graphics are strategically designed to present evidence before a jury. Expert witness graphics aim to inform the audience about complex scientific or technical concepts and provide visual clarity to the expert's testimony. These graphics are often created by experts who have in-depth knowledge and expertise in their respective fields. On the other hand, trial graphics are created by litigation artists working with litigation consultants, who focus on presenting the evidence in a persuasive and visually appealing manner to the jury. They simplify the information, ensuring it is easily comprehensible for laypeople, and aim to persuade the judge or jury of the client's position. They can (and do) take poetic license with the substance and may leverage analogies, caricatures, and even slight exaggerations to emphasize a point. 2. Experts create both. Typically, expert witness graphics are created by the very experts themselves, leveraging their knowledge and expertise in the subject matter. These experts have a deep understanding of their field's technical details and intricacies, allowing them to create graphics that effectively convey and simplify complex information. On the other hand, trial graphics are often entrusted to the expertise of graphic designers working in concert with litigation consultants. These professionals have a firm grasp of visual communication and design principles, enabling them to create visually compelling graphics that enhance the presentation of evidence in the courtroom. They collaborate closely with the legal team to ensure the graphics align with the trial strategy.
Summary (TL;DR) Three years ago, A2L Consulting was #1 in all categories, but we were especially known for our trial graphics and jury consulting. We took a three-year break, and now the team is back under a new moniker, Persuadius. We are hard at work with clients as we speak. The backstory is long and eventful but compelling. Read it below, and I would love to hear from you at ken@persuadius.com, especially if you need persuasive litigation graphics or jury consulting. Persuadium is the new essential element of persuasion. So, what happened? March 5, 2020, 9 pm, pre-lockdown. I am alone at home. I was prepping for a morning meeting related to some enormous litigation. My personal life was, unfortunately, overflowing with drama. For me, however, it was just another typically stressful day. I was proud of an article I had published that morning, 5 Reasons to Be Terrified of the Coronavirus (and 5 Reasons Not to Be). In retrospect, it is quite prescient. I'm still proud of it, if you can't tell. To celebrate the end of my day, I poured myself a glass of red wine, which I had certainly earned. Then, out of nowhere, I couldn't understand the content of my phone screen. I assumed incorrectly that perhaps I just needed to lie down. Maybe I was overstressed. Wrong. I was having a cerebral hemorrhage.
I love what we can do with data at A2L, particularly when we couple well-chosen words with well-designed litigation graphics. I think this area of our litigation consulting work is one place we add tremendous value. We can overplay a threat, or we can make something seem harmless. The latter is MUCH harder to do. Today, I'll focus on how one can use language and data to either inflame or calm your audience selectively. Why would you want to do this? Frankly, it's one thing trial lawyers and trial consultants do every day. Litigants on both sides of a case work with highly creative people who find ways to message the truth in a way that favors the client. Virtually every type of case benefits from this kind of statistical messaging. Fear is the best lever we have to motivate decision-making. We've written about this sort of thing before in articles like: 6 Ways to Convey Size and Scale to a Jury 5 Demonstrative Evidence Tricks and Cheats to Watch Out For What Trial Lawyers Can Learn From Russian Facebook Ads Trial Presentation Graphics: Questioning Climate Change in Litigation Using Trial Graphics & Statistics to Win or Defend Your Case Numbers in Litigation Graphics Do Not Lie, People Do The coronavirus is no joke, and I don't intend to be lighthearted or flippant about it. But, most of us are talking about every day now, right? And, the cacophony of those discussions will only get louder over the next month. It's an accessible and relevant example to use to make a point, and this article might even give you a talking point or two. As you read this article, remember, the point of this post is to point out how easy it is to use (arguably) accurate data to influence decision-making, not to use false data to make your point. Anyone can do that. So, should you be scared of the coronavirus? Presented below are two sets of five talking points, and all of them are true. As you read through them all, ask yourself, which side won out? Fear or peace. 5 Reasons to Be Terrified of the Coronavirus It's everywhere, and there is no cure. COVID-19 is probably very widespread already, and more frighteningly, we just don't know how widespread. We've all heard that testing in the U.S. was flubbed very badly. Source. So, given that we've only seen 135 cases in the United States, why might we worry that it is everywhere? Well, the old lily pad adage explains why worrying about the spread is well-founded. If you know a pond will be fully covered by lily pads after 48 days, and that lily pads will double in coverage every day (as the coronavirus does), how many days will it take before the pond is half covered? Our readers are some of the smartest, most educated people in the world, so I bet you figured that one out. It's day, forty-seven. But, the point of this example is the troubling follow-up question: at what point would you really notice the lily pad coverage? The answer is somewhat scarily, maybe, day forty-three, forty-four, or day forty-five when coverage is around 5-10%. So, we only may be at day five or so in this metaphor, which is why we don't really notice the virus close to us yet. The incubation time before symptoms show up may be weeks, and many never show symptoms. Maybe we will understand how widespread it is once actual testing starts in a week. One expert believes there may already be 100,000 cases in the U.S. Source. Brain damage. Announced yesterday, it can cause brain damage. Source.
Happy Super Tuesday in a presidential election year. Conventional wisdom tells us that America is more divided than ever. I think that is overstating things, but people certainly do seem dug into their belief systems these days. No amount of facts, data, or education will cause some people to change their minds about certain topics. And this is a great thing -- IF you're involved in jury selection. The entirety of human knowledge acquired over the last 100,000 years can be accessed in seconds using a device you always have with you. But if you believe something about carrying handguns, nuclear power, vaccines, or climate change, the chances are that no amount of data, study, or expert opinion will change your mind about that topic. If you're a potential juror and that bias happens to be in favor of the client we support, this is fantastic news. Such a juror will (subconsciously) selectively choose evidence that favors our client using confirmation bias or motivated reasoning. This is where being polarized into one camp or another gets interesting. When it comes to A2L's jury consulting work involving voir dire and jury selection, one of our primary goals is to discover a potential juror's bias. We also want to understand how a particular bias might affect our client. We want to, of course, deselect those jurors who would be biased against our client, and, just as importantly, not do anything to expose those jurors biased in our favor. In this era of polarization and in an election year, there is a useful shortcut -- one's political beliefs. So, ask about them, at least indirectly. For the most part, if I know you mostly watch MSNBC or Fox News or whether you love or loathe Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity, I can make some reasonably reliable inferences about your biases. We have discussed these and other approaches to voir dire and handling bias in the free A2L Consulting articles and publications like those listed below. 5 Questions to Ask in Voir Dire . . . Always 5 Voir Dire Questions to Avoid Jury Research and Mock Trials During Presidential Elections Font Matters - A Trial Graphics Consultant's Trick to Overcome Bias 7 Tips to Take “Dire” out of Voir Dire 10 Things Every Mock Jury Ever Has Said A Surprising Lesson From Voir Dire 10 Ways to Lose Voir Dire 5 Ways That a Mock Trial Informs and Shapes Voir Dire Questions Like It or Not: Likability Counts for Credibility in the Courtroom 10 Things Every Mock Jury Ever Has Said A Jury Consultant Is Called for Jury Duty One Voir Dire Must Do and One Voir Dire Must Never Do The Voir Dire Handbook | Free Download | A2L Consulting Jury Selection and Voir Dire: Don't Ask, Don't Know 15 Things Everyone Should Know About Jury Selection Why Do I Need A Mock Trial If There Is No Real Voir Dire? Jury Questionnaire by the Numbers 10 Ways to Spot Your Jury Foreman 5 Things Every Jury Needs From You Jury Selection & Jury Consultants: Three Strikes, You're Out! 10 Signs of a Good Jury Questionnaire 13 Revolutionary Changes in Jury Consulting & Trial Consulting Is Hiring a Jury Consultant Really Worth It? 12 Insider Tips for Choosing a Jury Consultant Do I Need a Local Jury Consultant? Maybe. Here are 7 Considerations. I’m Right, Right? 5 Ways to Manage Juror Bias Jury Selection Experts . . . True or False? Who Are The Highest-Rated Jury Consultants? Webinar: 12 Things Every Mock Juror Ever Has Said
I recently read two studies by Professor Jeffrey Loewenstein of the University of Illinois that offer extremely valuable persuasion tools for trial lawyers. They were not written with trial lawyers in mind, but the lessons they teach are universal when it comes to persuasion. Together they provide an important toolset for those of us who craft or hone opening statements for a living. The first of these studies, The Repetition-Break Plot Structure Makes Effective Television Advertisements [paywall], helps answer the question of why some advertising campaigns outperform others. It turns out there exists an ages-old and highly persuasive storytelling structure often seen in folktales around the world. Advertisers who use it tend to win more awards, generate more purchases, and see their advertisements shared virally -- much like a folktale. It is my experience that techniques that sell products sell arguments just as well. We've written about this before in articles like Could Surprise Be One of Your Best Visual Persuasion Tools? and Repeat a Simple Message Repeatedly to Maximize Courtroom Persuasion. It is exactly these types of inherently persuasive language tools that arouse core human instincts that we must deploy in the courtroom for our clients benefit. After all, if we can give our jurors an easily memorable story, we give them a potent weapon to argue in favor of our position with other jurors.
A very close friend just asked me what we do at A2L Consulting. Last week, a 30-year colleague and client remarked that he didn’t realize that half of our business involved jury consulting. Last night, a high-profile trial lawyer kindly complimented our firm while speaking to a group -- but called the company by its former name of 10 years ago. It’s my job to explain to people who we are and what we do, and some of the people closest to me don’t understand what we do as litigation consultants at A2L Consulting. Clearly, I am doing something wrong. The purpose of this article is to provide a detailed overview of the work we do as litigation consultants. Still, it will also educate anyone involved in trying cases about best practices in specific areas of trial preparation and trial practice. The Big Picture Our firm was one of the first (if not the very first) to call itself a Litigation Consulting firm back in the mid-1990s. At a 30,000 foot level, litigation consultants like A2L are hired by top trial lawyers and large corporate legal departments to help increase the odds of winning a particular case. We help increase the odds of winning a particular case by: testing and refining cases during a mock trial and jury consulting process by soliciting and measuring feedback from mock jurors and mock judges; helping to refine the narrative and key arguments to be delivered at trial through our peer-to-peer litigation consulting process. This litigation consulting process often includes multiple rounds of practice, particularly of the opening statement; designing litigation graphics presentations rooted in persuasion psychology that help judges and jurors both understand our cases and help to persuade those same fact-finders to take our side in the case; and using highly trained hot-seat operators (trial technicians) to display electronic evidence on the fly and leave the trial attorney in a position to connect with judge and jury; I call these four areas, jury consulting, litigation consulting, litigation graphics consulting, and trial technology consulting. Collectively, I call them all litigation consulting. Within each category, there are MANY sub-services. Below is an overview with linked articles that explain each of these four areas in more detail and offer best practices. If you are in the business of trying cases, there is a lot of value here for you in the materials below.
Sometimes I fear that my tips for trial lawyers might be perceived as self-serving. They're not, I promise, but I understand how someone could think that. Well, for at least for the duration of this article, don't take my word for it, please. Every day, we work with some of the world's best trial lawyers. I learn a lot from watching how the very best prepare for trial, and it is a pleasure to share what I witness with other great trial lawyers. Today, I'm presenting a collection of videos (some are from A2L clients, and some are not), trial presentation examples, sample litigation graphics, and other instances where trial lawyers and other great presenters lead by example. In this article, I'm not just asking you to accept what I say. I am asking you to watch your peers show or tell how to best persuade judges, jurors, and people in general. Here are twelve tips (really, there are hundreds of best practices embedded in here) from some of the world's best trial lawyers and presenters: Persuasive Storytelling Matters! Watch three accomplished trial lawyers explain why: https://www.a2lc.com/blog/three-top-trial-lawyers-tell-us-why-storytelling-at-trial-is-so-important Litigation Graphics should not be created by trial counsel - ever. These examples show why: https://www.a2lc.com/blog/excellent-litigation-graphics-in-the-impeachment-trial Litigation Graphics - It's no longer about reading bullet points. Jurors simply expect more!: https://www.a2lc.com/blog/still-think-persuasion-is-about-talking-while-showing-bullet-points-and-not-litigation-graphics Love him, hate him, respect him, disrespect him - whatever - this politician presents better than most trial lawyers (the linked articles are a trial lawyer presentation goldmine!): https://www.a2lc.com/blog/netanyahu-persuades-and-presents-better-than-most-trial-lawyers
Almost every day, our trial-lawyer litigation graphics consultants and our jury consultants are working to help a trial team to develop, refine, and practice their opening statements. We do this nationwide, often hundreds of times a year. Every trial team is different. One team, I recently had the pleasure of working with asked me for a model of what the best trial presenters do a week or two before trial. They didn't come out and ask that specific question, but they asked a lot of specific questions like: To practice, do we just print our opening from Word and read it? How do we integrate the slides when practicing? Do we print out the PowerPoint slides, and what about the animations where the text overlaps when we print? Should I read the opening or memorize it? Should we just work from bulleted phrases? Do I use the slides as cues for what to say next? Should I run the presentation as first-chair? These are great questions! Fortunately, there are specific best-practices that answer each of these questions. For our litigation consultants and for our clients who go to trial often (1x/year+), many of these are second nature. For most, however, there will be a tip or two of very high-value below. Here are 10 best practices and tips for the period of time immediately before trial: 1. It should look like this when you are done. Put your politics aside for a second. The impeachment trial presentations were not the very best I've ever seen, but they were certainly good enough. If you use the trial presentation style from the impeachment trials, you are well on your way towards excellence. But, in particular, I want you to watch a minute or so of two videos and consider three elements: 1. How trial presentation notebooks are used; 2. Absolutely no use of a clicker; 3. The presentations complement what is being said and don't feel like a jarring interruption. Here is an example from each side of the impeachment trial. Watch about 60 seconds of each to see the presentation style. 2. The trial presentation notebook. I think a well-prepared trial presenter works toward (at a minimum) presenting in a way that looks like those trial lawyers above. They use PowerPoint and follow many best practices for doing so. See my four-part series on trial presentation lessons from the impeachment trial. In particular, however, note that each trial lawyer presents from a trial presentation notebook. Their arguments are written out, PowerPoint slides are integrated into the language in Word, and this is printed out and placed in a three-ring binder so that the presenter never gets lost. They read their statements for the most part, but they also connect with their audiences. The printed version of your trial presentation notebook should look a bit like this as you head to trial: As you can see, your demonstrative evidence and real evidence is integrated into your written opening. Also, pauses and reminders to the presenter are included in the text. It's great when a trial lawyer memorizes their opening, but I find this only really works AFTER the entire opening has been written word-for-word in full-text form. I would MUCH rather watch a presenter who is organized and polished who reads than one wings it and stumbles about. I find that after one practices their opening from the written version enough, one cannot help but memorize it. 3. First chair really should not run the presentation. I know you like to be in control. I know you might want to go back and say something. However, if you have practiced enough, none of that will happen, and control doesn’t matter anymore. Hand over the clicker/laptop, and you get to look polished and prepared. Please see Trial Lawyers, Relinquish the Clicker. When you have your trial presentation notebook printed and ready to go, your trial technician (or a colleague) can simply follow along and control the presentation.
Share: