by Ryan H. Flax (Former) Managing Director of Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting If you can win the battle of opening statements, you'll likely win your trial. Up to eighty-percent of jurors will make up their minds about your case during opening statements. In this webinar you'll learn the top-five ways to maximize persuasiveness during opening statements. From how to tell compelling stories to visually supporting your key arguments, this one-hour will reveal the best secrets from courtroom persuasion experts. Ryan H. Flax, Esq., A2L's Managing Director of Litigation Consulting is an accomplished litigator who helps trial teams perfect their trial story and trial presentation using the latest persuasion science. Even if you can't make it to the live event, you'll receive access to the recorded version just for registering.
by Ryan H. Flax (Former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting We strongly advocate that counsel must use a visual presentation to support his or her oral argument at trial (and anywhere they need to be persuasive). This most commonly happens during opening statements and closing arguments at trial and the dominant format for such presentations is PowerPoint – a very good tool. However, like cutting your own hair or doing your own dental work, we must again caution you that you must really know what you’re doing because your case may depend on it. On January 22, 2015, the Supreme Court of the State of Washington published its opinion in State v. Walker, overturning the State Prosecutor’s conviction of an accused murderer because the attorney went too far with his demonstrative evidence in closing. A murderer has potentially been freed because, in the Court’s view, counsel was inflammatory in his presentation and “appealed to passion and prejudice” of the jury. Certainly as zealous advocates we do want to appeal to the passion of jurors on some level. We need their emotions to be in sync with the law and evidence, but what might be too much so as to prejudice the proceedings? Let’s explore the Washington Supreme Court’s opinion to see.
by Ryan H. Flax (Former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting Inter Partes Review, or IPR, has drastically changed the way we litigate patent infringement in the U.S. In big-budget patent cases, it is now almost inevitable that an IPR will be requested (and likely granted). The process is supposed to take no longer than a year to complete, but under current case law that’s a year’s delay in the district court case. Moreover, the odds are that any patent that enters IPR will not leave it unscathed. So, whether you need to win an IPR to save your client’s patent’s claims or to insure your client against infringement allegations, the bottom line is that it’s critically important. And, you need to win. Here are what I believe to be five important tips for improving your chances of victory once you get to the oral argument stage at the end of an IPR. At that point, you’ll need to convince Administrative Patent Judges that you’re the most reasonable person in the room and what you’ve said throughout the IPR “just makes sense.”
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting We East Coasters have a love-hate relationship with snow, and the snow moving into the Northeast today may be one for the record books - particularly around Boston. It will dominate the news for days - and it probably should. An incredibly large number of people will be impacted by this particular storm. Under or next to that red line on the map where the storm is forecast to hit, you'll find roughly 20% of the U.S. population living on roughly 3% of the country's land, half of the hedge funds, one third of the headquarters of Fortune 500 firms and — in the states under the red line, about 35% of the country's and, hard as it may be to believe, about 25% of the world's lawyers! A blizzard disrupts our lives. It can feel tedious, it creates confusion, and it generates a lot of hard work — sort of like a trial. Not all trials are blizzard-like, but some surely are. Here are 21 ways some trials are like a blizzard and how to avoid white-out conditions in your courtroom.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting One month ago I wrote an article titled 9 Things Outside Litigation Counsel Say About In-house Counsel, and we recently included it in our free In-House Counsel Litigation Toolkit e-book. It is a popular piece read by several thousand people so far. Today's article looks at what is being said by in-house counsel about outside litigation counsel. I've spent a lot of time talking with in-house counsel from large companies over the past two months. They have a lot to say about outside litigation counsel that I don't normally see reported in the popular press.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting There are many annual surveys that help rank law firms, specialty legal training programs and legal vendors and consultants. The annual Best of The National Law Journal is the crown jewel of these surveys. A2L Consulting is honored to have been nominated and voted best litigation graphics provider and best jury consultants in this and other polls many times before. By voting in such surveys, I believe we make our industry better by acknowledging those who contribute to it the most. While I would certainly be thrilled, honored, and grateful it if you would vote for A2L on questions #58 and #61 in the categories of Best Demonstrative Evidence Provider and Best Jury Consultants, I think simply voting is very valuable for all of us. Here is a link to the survey that is only open for a little bit more time. Note, not all questions have to be answered, but you do have to click the "Done" button at the end. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2015BestofNLJ
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 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.
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