by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Over breakfast the other day, a partner in a major law firm was explaining to me that it can be challenging to explain the added value that litigation graphics consultants can provide in a case, especially given the challenging budget environment in which litigators operate today. He was surprised when I said that the key here is not the fact that graphics consultants know how to prepare PowerPoints. After all, the average law firm associate can prepare a pretty decent PowerPoint presentation. The problem is that perhaps one in 500 PowerPoints prepared by a smart and well-informed law firm associate does more good than harm. What litigation consultants can do for a trial team is more complex, more persuasive and more sophisticated. So here are ten ways in which a litigation graphics consultant would add value where a litigation associate might cause harm or simply might not provide benefit. 1. Supporting the development of a narrative. We've written about this extensively, and great graphics consultants like those at our firm have enormous value here. One of the essences of trial presentation is telling a narrative. See, $300 Million of Litigation Consulting and Storytelling Validation. 2. Helping separate the theme from the narrative. Many of us who took trial advocacy were taught to start out our openings with "this is a case about . . . ." After that, we would usually state our theme. What many lawyers were not taught was how to develop a persuasive narrative. A few rare litigation graphics consultants can operate at the 1st chair level and offer this kind of support. See, 14 Differences Between a Theme and a Story in Litigation and 21 Reasons a Litigator Is Your Best Litigation Graphics Consultant. 3. Helping combat the now-fashionable “Reptile” trial strategy tactics that plaintiffs lawyers use. We have discussed this in several recent blog posts. See, Repelling the Reptile Trial Strategy as Defense Counsel.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting We at A2L are sponsoring later this month a new and exciting webinar entitled “Winning Your Case BEFORE Trial Using Persuasive Litigation Graphics.” Whether you are in-house counsel, outside counsel, or a member of a litigation support team, this 60-minute webinar will prove invaluable and will reveal secrets of persuasion that will help you win cases before trial. The key insight here is that graphics aren’t only for use at trial. They can also be used very effectively in motions and briefs presented to judges, even if jurors will never see them. If you are planning to use graphics to make your argument or tell your story at trial, why not use them at an earlier stage to make your argument convincingly in your brief or motion?
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting We just learned that a blog post that we wrote recently was named the “Pick of the Week” by LitigationWorld, a popular email newsletter for litigators, litigation support professionals, and corporate counsel who manage litigation. This is the seventh A2L Consulting post since 2011 to be so honored. For each issue of LitigationWorld, the editorial team there reviews hundreds of articles published during the previous week. From these articles, one is selected as LitigationWorld Pick of the Week. The article is selected because the editors there believe that it is a must-read for anyone interested in litigation. The article that won this honor was entitled “12 Reasons Litigation Graphics are More Complicated Than You Think.”
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting There is a lot to learn from data, and these days data is everywhere. For better or worse, data can be available for everything from the number of steps you walked today to how long you took to read a particular Web page. I recently took the time to assess how the AmLaw 100 law firms were interacting with our site, particularly with the articles on this blog. Some law firms are very active, and some hardly visit at all — and I think this information tells us a great deal about these law firms. This data is interesting to me for many reasons. First, I’m interested in making sure that our articles appeal to the AmLaw 100 law firms, as just about every one of them has been a client of A2L Consulting at some point. However, I’m also interested in what the data says about the law firm itself. Is the firm interested in learning? Is it serious about litigation? Is it set in its ways?
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting We publish a lot of articles on this blog here at A2L Consulting. Sometimes we publish so many that it’s not easy to decide which ones to read first. That's why once a quarter we do a mini-retrospective of the best articles based on what our readers choose to look at. Our theory is that the more people that read an article, the more compelling and the better it is. All these articles relate in some way to persuasion: Why expensive-looking litigation graphics are better than inexpensive-looking ones, why you are less persuasive when you are using clichés, how people obtain trial experience these days when most cases don’t go to trial. We think this also helps our readership sort through the very best of our content by relying on the votes of 6,600 fellow subscribers as indicated by their reading habits.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting If the creation of litigation graphics were as simple as some people make it out to be, you would never need a litigation graphics consultant. Yet litigation graphics consultants of varying skill levels are everywhere these days. Clearly, there is a need for them. But why? What value do litigation graphics consultants add? It’s a fair question, and here are 12 good answers. 1. Contrary to what some think, litigation graphics are more than electronic versions of printed documents: Many litigators make the mistake of thinking they are fully utilizing litigation graphics when they hire a trial technician who does nothing more than show documents on screen. See Why Trial Tech ≠ Litigation Graphics 2. Real litigation graphics consultants are storytelling experts, not PowerPoint experts: The technology isn’t what matters. As with lawyers, there are wildly differing levels of talent and education among litigation graphics consultants. The very best, like those on the A2L team, are true experts in helping to craft a story using visuals. These experts add value, not just slides. See Patent Litigation Graphics + Storytelling Proven Effective: The Apple v. Samsung Jury Speaks and $300 Million of Litigation Consulting and Storytelling Validation
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting I'm absolutely thrilled to announce the release of A2L Consulting's latest free litigation e-book, The Opening Statement Toolkit. You may download this book with no strings attached right now by clicking here. In this 219-page book, you will find 66 articles curated from A2L's massive collection of posts related to litigation and persuasion. Each article relates to opening statements in some way. From organizing the opening to the use of storytelling techniques to persuade, the book contains an amazing array of tips that will prove valuable to the novice litigator and the veteran alike.
by Ryan H. Flax, Esq. (Former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting We have discussed four important tips for maximizing persuasion during your opening statement (See parts 1, 2, and 3). The last tip is the use of demonstrative evidence in connection with the statement. You need to be aware that most people, other than lawyers, are visual preference learners. Most lawyers, in contrast, are auditory or kinesthetic preference learners.1 Most people teach the same way they prefer to learn – so lawyers typically teach by lecturing, since that is most comfortable for them. But this strategy does not help with the majority of jurors, who would prefer to be taught visually, at least in part. So bridge this courtroom gap with demonstrative evidence, including litigation graphics.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting A2L Consulting offered its first free litigation webinar just 18 months ago. Since then we've conducted six litigation focused webinars, all free, including: Storytelling for Litigators, Patent Litigation Graphics for Litigators, Making Expert Evidence Persuasive, Persuasion & Opening Statements, Using PowerPoint Litigation Graphics and What Mock Jurors Always Say. These webinars may be viewed on our site anytime, and they have been viewed nearly 10,000 times already. I find that amazing. Since each new webinar is a bit more popular than the one that came before it, it's a bit hard to tell which topics are really the most popular. So, I thought it would be helpful to ask our 6,500 blog readers what topic we should cover in our next webinar (likely May or June). Finding a good webinar presenter will not be difficult. On the A2L team, we have expert jury consultants, trial-tested litigators, experts in persuasion science, the top consultants in visual persuasion and many categories of litigation and persuasion experts.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO Persuadius I love great design. While it is becoming somewhat more common than it used to be, it’s still rare – and it’s even rarer in the courtroom. To be clear, my definition of great design includes everything from an interface like what one sees in a Tesla to the adaptive reuse of a historic structure to a well-crafted litigation graphic that tells a story clearly and without the need for further explanation. One place we don't expect to see great design is in parking signs, when we are parking the car and trying to figure out where to park and where not to park. I live in Washington, D.C., where they have some signage that would seem to violate every principle of great design. This one pictured here is a classic, and you probably have some just like it in your town. Does that look familiar? Well, one pilot program in Los Angeles is trying to change all that and make parking signs inspiring from a design perspective. Each sign contains a simple chart that is immediately clear to almost anyone. Green and red overlaid with symbols helps provide a clear message. Here’s an example below.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting I love a good trial timeline whether it's a printed large-format trial board or whether it's in PowerPoint form. This goes for my colleagues here at A2L, as well. In fact, we love timelines so much that we've even produced a book with more than 30 types of trial timelines illustrated. Timelines are used as demonstrative evidence in just about every trial. They serve an obvious purpose of orienting judge and/or jury to the order of events and how those events relate to one another. It's the one exhibit that helps make sense of it all, particularly in a complex case. As our trial timine book discusses, a timeline does not have to be limited to simple chronologies. In fact by incorporating graphs, photos, color schemes and more, a timeline can transmute from being simply informative to being quite persuasive.
by Ryan H. Flax (Former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting I am not advocating that you spend more to develop top-notch demonstrative evidence. What I want you to do is make sure that the litigation graphics that you do use look like you paid a million bucks for them. Make sure you’re getting what you’re paying for. Let me explain why. Recently published and widely reported research out of the University of Cincinnati relating to treating Parkinson’s disease shows that the placebo effect is a real thing and a powerful psychological phenomenon. Interestingly, what the study also shows is that it matters greatly to those experiencing a strong placebo effect how much they believed the pseudo-pharmaceutical cost. Amazingly, seemingly-more-expensive drugs turned out to be much better “drugs” in effect (even though they were not drugs at all). The more a patient believed a drug cost (here the artificial difference was $100 vs $1,500 per dose), the more effective it was at treating their symptoms of Parkinson’s. Perception of cost was capable of influencing physical and psychological behavior and responses on a subconscious level. Wow.
by Alex Brown Director, Operations A2L Consulting How do you determine value? This weekend, while my oldest child was in Boston at a gymnastics meet, we thought this would be the perfect time to “renovate” her room back home. My youngest daughter wanted to help but also wanted to negotiate her fee to do so. I came up with many reasons for her to find value in helping: the good of the family, experience, and enjoyment, but none of these provided the proper balance of cost and value to her. Finally I told her that she will be able to destroy something that belongs to her big sister, without any concern for retaliation. This brought her on board, and in the end she not only loved it but she also had the added benefit of being able to tell her sister how much fun it was to destroy her room and how destructive the work needed to be. As litigators, you have a similar job of having to persuade your client about, say, the importance of using expert witnesses or the need to bring on a litigation support team. This is always a delicate conversation because there are so many factors in play; emotions, money constraints, and inexperience, to name a few. For years, the use of expert witnesses has been an easy sell for the most part. But the importance of litigation support (i.e. theming, visual presentations, trial technology/hot seat operators, and mock trial exercises) is not universally accepted, so it can be more of an uphill struggle to convince clients of the need for these things and even harder to persuade them of the value. But why? It’s clearly not the cost, since that normally runs anywhere between .5 percent and 5 percent of the legal fees in a big case. So the sticking point is the need for these services.
by Alex Brown Director of Operations A2L Consulting Last year, we talked about the pros and cons of business development professionals -- specifically, the good and bad traits of people in this profession. Here, I start a new series on the six principles of persuasion. I have long been a huge fan of Dr. Robert Cialdini and find myself repeatedly going back to a book he wrote called "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion." In this book, he discusses the six principles of persuasion. I want to share with you these principles in a six-article series, starting with principle number one: Reciprocation. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, reciprocation is a noun that refers to a mutual exchange, a return in kind or of like value. Now before the emails come in about the ethics of giving the jury something in exchange for a favorable verdict, hear me out.
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