by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Not every page, blog article, webinar or e-book on A2L Consulting's site is right for everyone. As the saying goes, what is everyone's favorite radio station? WII – FM, of course. Otherwise known as "what's in it for me?" With hundreds of articles, dozens of e-books and hundreds of other pages, A2L's website has over 2,500 pages of valuable content. Sometimes, finding materials that are specific to your litigation practice area or need can be a challenge with all the available options. You can search A2L's site or even browse by topic area using a topic list in the sidebar of every blog post. In spite of this, I still hear from a lot of people who wonder whether we have experience working in their specific practice area or where they can find useful information related to their practice. I wrote this article to highlight some very useful information organized by practice area below. I've broken down the practice areas into 14 topics that cover most of the work we do. The alphabetical list with links under each topic should prove helpful when looking for the information most relevant to you.
In today's complex legal landscape, seeking guidance and support during times of legal battles is a natural instinct. People often turn to their close circle of advisors and friends for advice and support. While it is understandable to seek comfort and reassurance from those we trust, it is important to exercise caution when relying solely on the opinions of these individuals.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting It's been another unbelievable year at A2L Consulting. I'm very proud to see us again be voted best jury consultants and best litigation graphics consultants. More than 20,000 free e-books and webinars were viewed on A2LC.com. Incredibly, there were more than 300,000 pages viewed our site this year. About two-thirds of those visits were to our award-winning Litigation Consulting Report blog that now boosts 5,800 free subscribers (that's more than 2,200 new subscribers since last year!). On that blog, we will have published 115 articles by year's end. It's a few less than last year, but we have to confess, we were really busy being litigation consultants this year! Each year I list the very best articles based on your readership, and this year 14 articles stand out as the top-14 for 2014. Each of these articles was read by thousands of people, and some were read by tens of thousands.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting In recent years, I have seen in-house counsel become increasingly involved in litigation. Gone are the days when in-house would simply hire the top name litigator and hope for the best. Today, in-house counsel help determine trial strategy, they closely manage budget, they assist in choosing litigation support consultants, and they sometimes take a leadership role on the trial team. However, since trials are relatively rare and not many in-house counsel are trial lawyers themselves, how are in-house counsel supposed to effectively contribute in a litigation environment beyond simply managing the purse-strings? Enter this new and free book, The In-House Counsel Litigation Toolkit, a first of its kind for A2L Consulting. We have published more than a dozen wildly popular books over the last several years that have been collectively downloaded more than 100,000 times. However, this new 172-page book is the first A2L book designed for in-house counsel and their outside counsel. It contains 50 hand-curated articles focused on litigation and the role of modern in-house counsel.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Most would agree that mock trials are not conducted as often as they should be. After all, why wouldn't you want to learn what kinds of jurors you will see on your jury, understand what works about your case and what doesn't, understand what works about your opponent's case and what doesn't, gauge your settlement position, provide outside counsel a chance to practice and gain many more benefits all for a tiny fraction of the cost of what is often at stake? Is a mock trial mandatory? Of course not—and neither is having someone else cut your hair. Both are entirely optional expenses, but both are very good ideas.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Earlier this week I published, 25 Things In-House Counsel Should Insist Outside Litigation Counsel Do. I realized something important while writing that article and while participating in follow-up discussions with readers and colleagues. It's an important realization as I think recognition of it might just lead to better litigation results and money savings for in-house counsel. Here it is. Because of the current state of the relationship between most in-house counsel and outside litigation counsel, outside counsel are not asking for budget for everything they believe would help win a case. This is leading to short term savings and longer term major expenses.
Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting The relationship between in-house counsel and outside litigation counsel has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. Technology and the Internet have been the driving forces for many of the changes. Technology growth has forced outside litigation counsel into a quasi-technology consultant role in the way they deal with e-discovery and case management. Technology has made litigation more complex as the underlying subject matter of cases has become more complex. The availability of information via the Internet has made in-house counsel a more savvy shopper and a better informed manager. Technology has surely changed the way outside litigation counsel tries cases and has forced trial counsel to be trial-technology savvy. There are many more examples of how the fast flow of information is altering the balance of power between in-house and outside counsel, but you get the idea. Reflecting these changing times, the 25-point list below offers useful best-practices that in-house counsel should be demanding from outside litigation counsel.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting "How long in advance of trial should I be working with my trial graphics firm?" I hear this question in some form quite regularly. Often the person asking it has some idea of what they are planning to do, and they are looking for validation of their plan. However, for those who are genuinely looking for best-practices, I can offer meaningful guidance based on 20 years of advising top litigators and watching top trial teams prepare for trial. Clearly, a balance must be struck between the likelihood of settlement and the value of preparing your trial presentation long in advance of trial. Prepare too late and you risk not helping your fact finders understand your case, and you surely won't be maximizing your persuasiveness. Prepare too early and you run the risk of doing work that won't be needed if settlement occurs, and you might be focusing too much on your trial presentation and not enough on developing a good record. So what's the right amount of prep time for trial graphics?
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Yesterday, Legal Times released its annual directory of top legal consultants and vendors, The Best of Legal Times Reader Rankings 2014. While this reader-generated list focuses on Washington, DC, most of the categories have national relevance. In fact, most winning firms, like ours, are national firms who win similar accolades from Legal Times' sister publication, The National Law Journal. 600 firms were in the running for the various categories that include everything from jury consultants to litigation financiers to law firm web design to expert witness providers and much more. I'm very pleased to share the news that A2L Consulting, was voted #1 or #2 in all three of our core service areas. Click the green button at the end of this article to download your free copy of this useful directory.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting A little more than a month ago, I surveyed our readership and asked, "how does in-house counsel hire outside litigation counsel?" Six possible answers were presented in random order. In-house chooses the lowest priced firm from a group of approved firms. In-house hires the best litigator based on prior experience. In-house hires the best litigator based on their reputation. In-house hires their litigator friends and former (or future) colleagues. In-house hires the litigator most likely to generate a win. Finally, a write-in field for other responses answers Having worked in the litigation industry for more than 20 years and seeing favoritism trump skill plenty of times, I expected some cynicism to show through in the answers provided. However, even with that expectation, I was still very surprised with the results.
by Alex Brown Director of Operations A2L Consulting My hobby is woodworking. Recently, I had to build a dog fence so that my wife could train one of our dogs. From photos I figured out the dimensions, type of wood to use, and the hardware needed. What I did not take into consideration were the tools I would need to complete the job easily and on schedule. In the process of building the fence, I ended up at our local ACE Hardware store shopping for multiple tools including one I had never used before, a planer. Only after destroying a few key parts for the fence did I learned my lesson, and I decided to figure out how to use the tool that was supposed to make the job easier. When preparing for a trial, most decisions are made prior to the actual trying of the case. Who will be the expert witnesses, what is the theme, how and when do we introduce our evidence, and how do we present it to the jury or judge in an engaging and persuasive way in the form of a trial presentation. PowerPoint is key to most trial presentations, and we all believe we know how to use this tool. But, we also know that at 3 AM, 48 hours prior to opening statements, is the time when Murphy's Law shows up to cause a little havoc. Below are seven ways to use PowerPoint effectively to reduce the strain that Mr. Murphy seems to always introduce.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting If you can learn the secrets of how mock jurors commonly behave during mock trial deliberations, you will be better positioned to win at trial. These behavior patterns are understandably foreign since most people see mock juries deliberate infrequently. However, when you are a jury consultant, mock trials are routine, and repeat behavior patterns become clear over a long career. Surprisingly, it turns out that no matter where you go in the country, mock jurors tend to act in similar ways. Although there are venue-specific idiosyncrasies, mock jurors act quite similarly from locale to locale. If you understand the questions they almost always ask, the order of deliberations they usually follow and how mock juries address damages almost every time, you will be far ahead of almost all of your peers. We at A2L have put together a free 75-minute webinar, 12 Things Every Mock Juror Ever Has Said. It will be conducted live on December 9, 2014 at 1:30pm ET and is designed to share A2L's accumulated knowledge about mock jurors. Click here to register for it for free.
by Ryan H. Flax, Esq. (Former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting It is well known and generally accepted by the top performers in the litigation community that you need to use demonstrative evidence, including litigation graphics, to be persuasive at trial. As a scientific certainty, using visual support to back up your key points and arguments is critical to maximizing persuasiveness. As a litigator, I’ve personally created and used graphics, and developed litigation graphics for others, to use at trial, at Markman (patent claim construction) hearings, and for other presentations. As a litigation consultant, I’ve seen countless terrific litigators both understand that they do need graphics and at the same time misunderstand how they should be using litigation graphics in these and similar settings.
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