by Ken Lopez The courtroom is a forum where issue advocacy is enhanced by persuasive litigation graphics. However, other settings exist where attorneys, consultants, politicians, lobbyists and advocacy organizations must persuade skeptical audiences. This article focuses on the creation of advocacy graphics for a particular issue: hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking. Advocacy or lobbying graphics are especially valuable as the material may be used to educate a potential jury pool, to persuade and inform government officials and to support settlement negotiations. These advocacy presentations may be distributed via PowerPoint, YouTube or even delivered in person from an iPad®.
In trial presentation graphics, a great deal can depend on the quantity of data that is presented to the jury and on the way in which it is presented. For example, it has become conventional wisdom that humans generate pollution in the form of carbon dioxide, that carbon dioxide and other pollutants cause a greenhouse effect on the planet, and that this effect noticeably raises global temperatures and/or causes climate change. Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, cemented this belief in the minds of the public and future jurors, largely through the use of effective visual presentations. The U.S. Government chart below captures the conventional wisdom well. As large quantities of carbon dioxide entered the atmosphere with rapid industrialization in the past 100 years or so, global temperatures went up, it shows.
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