This week, Regina Hopper takes the reins as A2L's Managing Director of Litigation Consulting. In her new role, Regina will be responsible for directing the efforts of A2L's 20+ litigation consultants, litigation graphic artists, and trial technicians nationwide. For A2L clients, who are most often trial attorneys from large law firms representing large companies, her experience brings added depth to A2L's already robust 23-year-old litigation consulting and litigation communications practices. Regina comes to A2L with an extremely broad background in litigation, trade association work, public policy, and the media. She joined A2L in 2017 and she also serves as senior vice president for global public policy of GRIDSMART, a company that develops smart, cost-effective technologies to improve the safety and efficiency of the nation’s transportation system. Before joining GRIDSMART, Regina was president and CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, the nation’s largest organization dedicated to advancing the research, development, and deployment of intelligent transportation systems to improve the nation’s surface transportation system. The group has taken the lead in introducing Congress, the media, and the nation to the concept of driverless cars. She also served for four years as president and CEO of America’s Natural Gas Alliance, a trade group that advocates for the development and utilization of natural gas resources. While there, Regina first encountered A2L who she engaged to support ANGA's advocacy and persuasive communication efforts. Regina also served as executive vice president of US Telecom and of the American Trucking Associations. Prior to that she was senior vice president of litigation communications at Weber McGinn, a leading public relations firm. Regina was a D.C.-based correspondent for CBS News, where she won an Emmy award for her work on the “48 Hours” show. In her various trade association positions, Regina developed an expertise in assisting industry leaders communicate legal and public policy initiatives to the public and federal, state and local policymakers. Regina is a graduate of the University of Arkansas School of Law licensed in Arkansas. In 2012, CEO Update selected Hopper as one of the nation's top association CEOs. In that same year, The Hill named her to its annual list of top lobbyists. “What pulls my whole career together is my interest in storytelling and my ability to tell a story,” Regina says. “Whether someone is doing advocacy for a trade association, testifying as an expert witness, or reporting a story as a White House correspondent, it’s always a matter of working with a team to tell a story. It all has to be concise, understandable, well-written and logical.” Regina succeeds Tony Klapper who is now Assistant General Counsel for Products, Regulatory, and Litigation at Volkswagen. Tony succeeded Ryan Flax who is now an Administrative Patent Judge at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Regina Hopper can be reached at 703.548.1799 or hopper@A2LC.com. Additional articles and resources available from A2L related to litigation consulting, litigation communications, litigation graphics, litigation storytelling, and litigation technology include: Top trial lawyers talk about working with A2L Top trial lawyers explain why storytelling is so critical for persuasion 10 Things Litigation Consultants Do That WOW Litigators Free E-Book: What is the Value of a Litigation Consultant? 21 Reasons a Litigator Is Your Best Litigation Graphics Consultant 3 Types of Litigation Graphics Consultants Free Webinar: Storytelling as a Persuasion Tool Free E-Book: Storytelling for Litigators Your Coach Is Not Better Than You – in the Courtroom or Elsewhere 10 Types of Value Added by Litigation Graphics Consultants Explaining the Value of Litigation Consulting to In-House Counsel 17 Reasons Why Litigation Consultants Are Better at Graphics Than Law Firms $300 Million of Litigation Consulting and Storytelling Validation Top 7 Things I've Observed as a Litigation Consultant 9 Reasons Litigation Consultant is the Best Job Title in Litigation
Every year going back to the start of this blog in 2011, I have paused to look back over the past 12 months of articles and see which were deemed best by our readers. Some articles have been read 90,000 times while others, often surprisingly, are only viewed a few dozen times. In this method of article ranking, every reader view is a vote. This year's top 21 list is consistent with recent years. Articles about storytelling and voir dire are the most read. The #1 ranked article, in particular, was very popular because it was not only about storytelling but features three top trial lawyers (all clients of A2L) talking on video about how they incorporate storytelling techniques into their advocacy. Enjoy these articles and please do encourage a friend to subscribe (for free) to this blog, The Litigation Consulting Report. Soon, we will have more than 10,000 subscribers. Each of these articles can be tweeted or shared on Linkedin using the buttons below the article. Click the titles to view the articles. 21. What Trial Lawyers Can Learn From Russian Facebook Ads 20. 5 Key Lessons You Can Learn From Mock Juries 19. How to Get Great Results From a Good Lawyer
The trial technician, sometimes called the hot-seater, is the person who runs the courtroom technology so that a trial team does not have to do so. A trial tech typically uses programs like OnCue or Trial Director to manage thousands of exhibits and has each at the ready to be displayed and highlighted. During opening, closing, and expert testimony, the trial tech runs the PowerPoint system to ensure flawless and well-choreographed presentations. The benefit of using a trial technician is that the trial team can focus on the law and the facts and can concentrate on connecting with the judge and jury rather than having to worry about the technology. When the relationship between trial counsel and the trial tech is smooth and well-rehearsed, the presentation looks like a perfectly planned and executed professional live production. We have been deploying trial technicians around the country for trials long and short for the past three decades. We were even sending out trial techs before PowerPoint was being used in the courtroom and when the preferred format for electronic evidence handling was the laser disk. In this time, we have employed dozens of trial techs and have learned what makes a good one and what kind of preparation equals success. Here are 12 tips for finding just the right technician: 1. Experience is everything. Our techs usually have a dozen or more major trials under their belts. Some have been to trial hundreds of times. They also routinely run the technology at hearings and during arbitrations/mediations. See, With So Few Trials, Where Do You Find Trial Experience Now? 2. The first-chair attorney must be willing to practice with them. There is no substitute for practice and preparation in the courtroom. The great trial lawyers practice frequently so that the trial looks flawless. See Practice, Say Jury Consultants, is Why Movie Lawyers Perform So Well. 3. They have war stories galore - particularly in overcoming problems. Courtrooms are not usually state of the art, so much of the technology must be brought in or enhanced. Otherwise, jurors are left wondering why their own living rooms and work conference rooms are much more advanced than what your trial team is providing. Great trial techs have overcome hundreds of small issues in a trial. See 12 Ways to Avoid a Trial Technology Superbowl-style Courtroom Blackout.
It turns out that a large number of Russian ads on Facebook that viewers did not know were Russian ads influenced the way people thought about various issues last year. They may have even influenced the 2016 presidential election to some degree. Rather than delve deeply into the appropriateness of these ads (in my view, they were wholly inappropriate), who exactly directed their placement, and how exactly they affected behavior, let's instead look at these ads from a trial lawyer’s perspective. After all, if pictures and a few short phrases can be used to change the voting behavior of the electorate, it stands to reason that pictures and some well-chosen phrases can be used to change the voting behavior of jurors. In the courtroom, there's no ethical debate about this process, since jurors know exactly where the message originates from -- the mouths of lawyers, experts, and witnesses. So if an attorney can use proven persuasion techniques and it's ethical to do so, the attorney must do so to zealously represent his or her clients. This is precisely why high-end persuasion firms like A2L exist. We're here to help persuade, using all appropriate and ethical means, both visual and rhetorical. We're not Russian hackers. Instead, we're hackers of human psychology, since we help top trial lawyers use proven techniques to maximize their persuasiveness. We do this by bringing together a remarkable combination of trial lawyers, social scientists, and artists to do what we do, a process we call litigation consulting. Let’s look at the Russian ads in this light. Because of some good investigative journalism and investigative work in Congress, many of the ads, Facebook groups, Facebook pages, and messages have been identified and published -- and most of them are really disturbing. The ads used some of the same time-honored techniques that trial lawyers use – but because their source was disguised and because they were intended to disrupt, not to persuade, they were dangerous. For example, many of the ads targeted topics where there is a deep division or poked at issues in a way designed to inflame. In almost every case, they used a favored technique of marketers, trial lawyers, and politicians alike -- FEAR. And that makes sense. Fear is a ten times greater motivator than hope of gain. That’s why marketers tell us that the one-time low pricing will end Sunday night, not how happy we will be on a new mattress. That’s why politicians tell us that immigrants should fear deportation if their opponent is elected, not that the melting pot is a good thing. And finally, of course, that’s how a specious argument that an everyday product causes cancer can overwhelm a defense based on good science. Fear wins, and good trial lawyers on both sides of the courtroom must use it. I wrote a lot about this topic in my five-part series about the Reptile Trial Strategy. It's no surprise that ads traced back to Russia focused on hot-button topics like Black Lives Matter, Muslims supporting Hillary Clinton, gun rights, LGBT rights, and more. Let's look at the techniques used in three Russia-linked ads: 1. Heart of Texas: This Facebook group that advocated for Texas secession quickly gained more than 250,000 members. The ad below uses a fake Facebook event as part of its messaging. What made a quarter of a million Texans unwittingly sign up for a Russian-backed Texas secessionist movement? The ad works because it stokes existing biases while seemingly coming from a credible source. If we define bias broadly as any commonly held belief by a person that makes it harder for them to accept contrary evidence, you can see how this could work in the courtroom. Obviously, we’re not talking about using racial, ethnic, or sexual preference biases as part of advocacy. Instead, I’m referring to those beliefs that many jurors show up to trial with -- like bankers are all motivated by greed, big energy companies don’t really care about the environment, or tech companies will ruthlessly steal from one another. Just as the Russians used biases in a deplorable manner, trial lawyers can play to other biases by encouraging jurors to accept and double down on their beliefs. As I wrote in a recent post, when you combine a credible source such as an expert witness with a message that jurors are ready to hear, you are likely to come out ahead. Consider how I embraced these biases and re-messaged these in a recent blog post about bias below. As you read each think about how you might couple each with persuasive visuals to maximize persuasion. Bankers are greedy, so why would they ever do something that risked their money? (Possible visual storytelling aid to accompany: evidence of penny pinching at all levels of the organization summarized on a chart to demonstrate a culture of avarice) XYZ oil company has been more reckless with the environment than you or me, but given what they went through before, do you really think they are dumb enough to do it again? (Possible visual storytelling aid to accompany: list in a slowly scrolling chart the tangible consequences the organization faced as a result of the last disaster) Sure, tech companies will do anything to get ahead, but can you imagine anything more humiliating to someone as competitive as the CEO of ABC company as looking as if you’re not as smart as the other guy? Nothing is worth that when you are a competitive tech geek. (Possible visual storytelling aid to accompany: text callouts coupled with the CEO photo openly demeaning the intelligence of the opposition)
We don't have a Hippocratic oath (i.e. do no harm) in the legal field, but when it comes to using litigation graphics at trial, maybe we should. You see there are some times when using litigation graphics does real damage to your overall persuasiveness. It is incorrect to assume that when using visual aids such as demonstrative evidence, scale models, trial boards, computer animation, or the ever-present PowerPoint presentation you are always doing good and helping your audience. Here are seven times when you would be better off changing your approach or not using litigation graphics at all: You are reading from your slides: If you populate your trial presentation with bullet point filled slides and you read them, you are reducing the amount of information your audience will remember and understand. This is due to the redundancy effect or split-attention effect. See Should You Read Documents Out Loud at Trial? You are going to get caught cheating: Creating a chart that is persuasive is great. Creating one that is misleading can cost you your credibility. As one of our customers rightly says in the video below, "Finding ways to illustrate ideas but also to visually display the evidence in a way that's understandable to the jury is critical in order to earn their trust -- which is the most important asset you have." See 5 Demonstrative Evidence Tricks and Cheats to Watch Out For. You are not using storytelling in combination with your litigation graphics: All too often trial counsel moves chronologically through a case without considering whether there was a better approach to storytelling. I think timelines can lock us into this approach. Sometimes chronological is best but sometimes using more sophisticated storytelling techniques to persuade work best. In any case, if you fail to tell a story, a jury will make one up to fill the void. Therefore, be sure to combine your visuals with storytelling to win your case. See Storytelling at Trial - Will Your Story Be Used? and Don't Be Just Another Timeline Trial Lawyer and 12 Ways to SUCCESSFULLY Combine Oral and Visual Presentations
We are delighted to announce the publication of a new free e-book, the Trial Lawyer’s Guide to Environmental, Toxic Tort, and Product Liability Litigation, 3rd Edition. It is a guide to all the issues and all the possibilities that can come up in environmental, toxic tort, and product liability litigation – whether related to PowerPoint, scientific expert witnesses, competing scientific theories, body language, or any of a myriad of questions that can come up in this complex field. This is the third edition of a book that we first released in 2011. We have dramatically expanded the scope and the depth of the book to add dozens of new and relevant articles, including articles on the importance of litigation graphics in toxic tort litigation and on demonstrative evidence in product liability and failure-to-warn cases. The book is now 256 pages long and packed with valuable articles. Environmental, toxic tort, and product liability cases have similar challenges. Each typically involves disputes over science and often results in a battle of expert witnesses. As a result, these cases are some of the hardest cases to litigate. These cases can include technical issues similar to patent cases, scientific elements similar to pharmaceutical cases, and damages issues similar to construction cases. In addition, for many jurors, these cases are fraught with political ramifications in a way that many other cases are not. Jurors often harbor a basic belief that if a big company is on trial, it has probably harmed people or the environment in pursuit of profits and has caused long-term damage to people and the planet – either by directly causing human health effects, polluting the air, water, or ground, or by contributing to global warming. It is important for a lawyer representing such a company to overcome jurors’ biases and to do so while keeping the case from seeming dull and boring. If you are to be successful litigating these cases, you have to be among the best in the profession. The natural complexity of these cases means that demonstrative evidence must be used extensively, jury consulting is often appropriate, and the use of trial technicians allows you to focus on maintaining your connection with the jury – rather than staying connected to the technology. This e-book will help you better prepare to litigate environmental, toxic tort, and product liability cases. From making the most of your mock trial, to managing trial team psychology, to specific demonstrative examples, there is something in here for all trial lawyers. I hope you enjoy this book and will take a moment to share some feedback by contacting me. If you ever have a question about how to prepare an environmental, toxic tort, or product liability case anywhere in the world, please ask. You may download the book by clicking this link or by clicking the download button below.
We write here frequently about the importance of using visual evidence in trials and indeed in all sorts of other legal forums. But technology is not the be-all and end-all of persuasion. It is a very useful tool, but the importance of technology does not lessen the need to tell a convincing story to a jury or another decisionmaker. In fact, if courtroom technology is not deployed correctly, presenting visuals to a judge or jury can detract from one’s message rather than enhance it. In other words, figuring out who will be victorious at trial is not simply a matter of determining who is using litigation graphics and who is not. Any trial is ultimately about how each side can use its graphics to support an effective story. Technology-based graphics, therefore, should not be used to make up for the trial skills a lawyer lacks, but rather to enhance the skills he or she already possesses. The type of technological visual is another variable to consider when presenting an argument. Some research has suggested that depending on the case, different types of technology-based graphics can have different persuasive effects on the jury. For example, researchers compared a computer simulation of an air crash, an audiotape with written transcript of a cockpit voice recorder, and a speaker reading the cockpit voice recorder, and asked people to decide whether they believed there was a pilot error based on the evidence to which they had been exposed. The researchers found that jurors who were shown the computer animation believed the flight crew to be significantly less negligent that the other jurors who did not. Animations are so powerful because they can take us to places human beings cannot go. But even without animations, simple PowerPoint slides can be quite effective in advancing your narrative if done right.
During one college summer, I used to engage in aikido, a martial art. In retrospect, it was all a bit goofy, but I learned some good lessons from it. In particular, I learned about a technique common to many of the martial arts and to conflict in general. This is the idea that you can use someone's momentum against them. If they are running at you, you can move to the side and trip them -- and they will fall. This requires far less energy from you. Similarly, in the courtroom, while there is no physical contact (hopefully), there is certainly a direction and a momentum in the way factfinders arrive at conclusions. We've written about the idea of confirmation bias before in articles like I’m Right, Right? 5 Ways to Manage Juror Bias and Font Matters - A Trial Graphics Consultant's Trick to Overcome Bias. It's a concept that I believe all trial lawyers must understand at least somewhat. In the courtroom, using the momentum of a juror’s beliefs to help further those beliefs is a master trial lawyer technique. A new study reveals just how important it is for high-level trial lawyers to understand this concept of persuasion. The study, reported in the open-access journal Computational Biology, confirms something that is a little sad. It turns out that most humans will continue believing something that they previously believed, even when presented with clear evidence to the contrary and even when it hurts us to continue believing it. It's a bit more nuanced than that, but this is the essence of it. In the courtroom, we regularly work with banks accused of fraud, companies that have allegedly polluted the environment, and tech companies accused of theft of trade secrets. Trial lawyers always have the temptation to simply try to straightforwardly show judges and juries evidence that clearly contradicts the beliefs that those factfinders arrived with. That only makes sense, right? After all, if someone says you put the pollution there and you didn't, you just tell them you didn't do it, bring evidence, and you're off the hook, right? Unfortunately, my experience and this study do not support that idea. All humans arrive with certain biases when they show up to trial – such as these: Bankers are greedy. Oil companies don't care about the environment. Tech companies will do anything to win. All too often, trial counsel puts a lot of effort into trying to disprove these beliefs. Instead, consider the aikido move, step to the side, agree with the momentum, and use it to your advantage as follows: Bankers are greedy, so why would they ever do something that risked their money? XYZ oil company has been more reckless with the environment than you or I, but given what they went through before, do you really think they are dumb enough to do it again? Sure, tech companies will do anything to get ahead, but can you imagine anything more humiliating to someone as competitive as ABC company as looking as if you're not as smart as the other guy? Nothing is worth that when you are a competitive tech geek. In other words, find a way to accept that either your factfinders walked in with a certain bias or that your opponent will help them form a bias during opening statements – and then run with it. There’s no better way to test this approach than in a mock trial setting. That’s where you can learn to anticipate the biases and get ahead of them. Common sense, that new study, and several decades of litigation experience bear this out. Other free A2L articles and resources related to confirmation bias, the overwhelming power of the opening statement, and the power of effective storytelling in the courtroom include: When Smart Ain’t So Smart - Cognitive Bias, Experts and Jurors 7 Ways to Overcome Cognitive Bias and Persuade Still Think Persuasion is About Talking While Showing Bullet Points? 5 Essential Elements of Storytelling and Persuasion How Much Text on a PowerPoint Slide is Too Much? 5 Ways to Maximize Persuasion During Opening Statements - Part 4 Free A2L Consulting Webinar: Persuasive Storytelling for Litigation Good-Looking Graphic Design ≠ Good-Working Visual Persuasion I’m Right, Right? 5 Ways to Manage Juror Bias Persuasive Graphics: How Pictures Are Increasingly Influencing You 14 Places Your Colleagues are Using Persuasive Graphics That Maybe You're Not Font Matters - A Trial Graphics Consultant's Trick to Overcome Bias Why the President is Better than You at Creating Persuasive Graphics Law360 Interviews A2L Consulting's Founder/CEO Ken Lopez Are Jurors on Your “Team”? Using Group Membership to Influence Subscribe to this blog for free
Many times in a typical year, A2L is voted #1 in one of our service areas (jury consulting, litigation graphics consulting, and hot-seat/trial technology consulting) in reader-driven polls. Often these polls are conducted by major legal industry publications and sometimes by bar association publications. We don't announce all of our wins as honestly, I feel a little guilty writing about it. Yes, that sounds a bit like a #humblebrag, but I mean it. I, like all the other authors here at A2L’s Litigation Consulting Report Blog, work hard to create reader-focused articles -- not A2L-focused articles. We publish to engage with the world’s top trial lawyers in a way unlike anyone else. We publish to elevate the overall state of the industry. We publish because we authentically love what we do. Today, we're very proud to announce that the Massachusetts litigation community voted in the annual Massachusetts Lawyer Weekly reader survey and concluded that A2L was a top firm in both courtroom presentations and jury consulting. We are honored and grateful. With that announcement and explanation out of the way, let's make this article about you -- our 10,000 or so readers whom we value so much. Let's even do it in my favorite way possible -- using a list. The ABA said of our blog articles, “It’s hard to resist the infectious numbered-list headlines that keep us reading their chatty, first-person posts answering questions we hadn't yet thought to ask.” So here are the top five reasons why A2L being voted number one matters to you that are in no way about us: These votes are helpful for your client relationship. It’s easier for you if a company is vetted already. As they say, nobody gets fired for hiring IBM, and the same is true when it comes to your litigation clients. Because A2L is regularly voted a top litigation consulting firm, you can make a recommendation to your client with total peace of mind. There is so much to worry about at trial. It’s nice to take one worry off the table by hiring a trial consultant that has this level of approval. This saves your client money. Taking the time to find the litigation consulting firm that’s right for your case is expensive to do well. This effort could easily cost the client thousands of dollars. Instead, you can present these options to your client: we can interview all the regular players or we can believe in the wisdom of the legal community. This saves you time in vetting. Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly issued a helpful guide of top-rated firms like ours. It's a nice peer-reviewed guide that gives you insight into who the best people are. You can download that by clicking here. You know that your peers trust us. At the end of the day, most of us trust our peers to give us good recommendations for everything from doctors to lawyers to handymen. The same is true for litigation consultants. Other free articles and resources related to A2L's jury consulting and demonstrative evidence consulting practices: Three Top Trial Lawyers Tell Us Why Storytelling Is So Important A2L Voted Best Jury Consultants & Best Trial Graphics Firm 3 Types of Litigation Graphics Consultants 11 Ways to Start Right With Your Litigation Graphics Team 21 Reasons a Litigator Is Your Best Litigation Graphics Consultant 5 Settlement Scenarios Where Litigation Graphics Create Leverage 6 Triggers That Prompt a Call to Your Litigation Consultant VIDEO: Working with A2L Consulting - Customers Talk About A2L's Litigation Consulting Services 17 Reasons Why Litigation Consultants Are Better at Graphics Than Law Firms 10 Types of Value Added by Litigation Graphics Consultants The Real Value of Jury Consulting, Litigation Graphics & Trial Tech How Does a Trial Presentation Consulting Firm Do What It Does? With So Few Trials, Where Do You Find Trial Experience Now? 12 Ways in Which We Make a Boutique Litigation Firm Feel Like a Big Firm 16 PowerPoint Litigation Graphics You Won't Believe Are PowerPoint 10 Things Litigation Consultants Do That WOW Litigators 6 Studies That Support Litigation Graphics in Courtroom Presentations FREE Webinar: Persuading with PowerPoint Litigation Graphics FREE Webinar: Storytelling as a Persuasion Tool 10 Things Litigators Can Learn From Newscasters The 12 Worst PowerPoint Mistakes Litigators Make 6 Trial Presentation Errors Lawyers Can Easily Avoid Explaining the Value of Litigation Consulting to In-House Counsel The 14 Most Preventable Trial Preparation Mistakes Trial Graphics Dilemma: Why Can't I Make My Own Slides? (Says Lawyer) Law360 Interviews A2L Consulting's Founder/CEO Ken Lopez
The other day, I noticed a New York Times obituary for Alan Peckolick, a graphic designer and illustrator known for his distinctive corporate logos and typeface designs. Peckolick championed “expressive typography.” He wrote a textbook called “Teaching Type to Talk.” He created General Motors’ “GM” logo, and letterforms for Mercedes-Benz, Pfizer and Revlon. In a 2015 interview, Peckolick explained that he conceived of “letterform as a piece of design. Cat is not ‘cat’ — it’s c-a-t. That’s what led to the beginning of the expressive topography.” Peckolick belonged to a pioneering generation of designers who reinvented typeface as a form of art. They believed that, just as words convey literal dictionary meaning, so do they express figurative value through typeface and letterform. In litigation graphics, imbuing words with depth of meaning and expression is mission-critical. Each letter counts. Each word must carry its own weight on the page. There simply is no space to waste. And in addition to practicing economy of language, we must elevate the appearance of words to convey essential meaning. As a design blogger wrote: Typography often provides that at-a-glance first impression that people gauge and judge the rest of the design by — so your font choices need to be purposeful and appropriate. Is your font saying “beach vacation” when it should be saying “job interview”? Do the elements of your font “outfit” clash, or do they complement each other? Are they effectively communicating the qualities you want to project? Ask yourself, does the chart you are devising use an easy-to-read, unobtrusive typeface? Does the timeline have enough white space to let a juror follow it with her eyes? Does the font say “major patent issue worth hundreds of millions” or does it say “routine commercial dispute”? By power-packing words with multi-layers of meaning, we communicate at the highest level, allowing words not simply to “speak” in unison with graphics, but to come alive and leap off the page at the reader. Other free A2L Consulting articles and resources related to graphic design, font usage, and persuasion tricks in litigation graphics include: Font Matters - A Trial Graphics Consultant's Trick to Overcome Bias Still Think Persuasion is About Talking While Showing Bullet Points? Free Download: A Guide to Making Great Trial Timelines 5 Demonstrative Evidence Tricks and Cheats to Watch Out For A Surprising New Reason to Repeat Yourself at Trial Watch Out for Subliminal Messages in Trial Graphics The Top 14 Testimony Tips for Litigators and Expert Witnesses Never Use Bullet Points - Here's Why Don't Use PowerPoint as a Crutch in Trial or Anywhere 6 Trial Presentation Errors Lawyers Can Easily Avoid 12 Reasons Bullet Points Are Bad (in Trial Graphics or Anywhere) 10 Criteria that Define Great Trial Teams How Much Text on a PowerPoint Slide is Too Much? 5 Ways to Maximize Persuasion During Opening Statements - Part 4 Free A2L Consulting Webinar: Persuasive Storytelling for Litigation The 12 Worst PowerPoint Mistakes Litigators Make 12 Ways to SUCCESSFULLY Combine Oral and Visual Presentations The Effective Use of PowerPoint Presentation During Opening Statement 16 PowerPoint Litigation Graphics You Won't Believe Are PowerPoint 12 Questions to Ask When Hiring a Trial Graphics Consultant
It is unquestioned that technology has had a profound impact on our environment in the last couple of decades. Our brains are constantly adapting at a physical level to our environment, and research has suggested that technology has changed the way we perceive, remember, and process information. Not much has yet been said, however, about how technology has changed the ways in which jurors process information and the appropriate new styles that trial lawyers ought to use in presenting information to a jury. The growth of the internet, 24-hour television, and mobile phones means that we now receive five times as much information every day as we did 30 years ago. With the appropriate internet connection, technology allows us to access any information in less than a second. According to Internet Live Stats (2014), 88.5 percent of people in the United States are internet users. In addition, the internet has also changed the way we as a society process information. For example, when we read a book we do so linearly, from one sentence to another, but when using multimedia devices, we scan for keywords and grab small bits of relevant information. The internet has influenced people’s cognition in a way which they will now typically forego complex analytic thinking to get information quickly and easily. In other words, people allow the internet or even their smartphones to think for them. As a result, it is much harder to sustain attention, to think about one thing for an extended period, and to think deeply when new stimuli have been pouring in all day long. This is not to say that technology has negatively impacted our brain. Instead, the excess amount of information at our fingertips has changed the way we process large amounts of information and specifically, what information engages our attention.
As you might expect, I think about the litigation graphics industry a good deal. It’s a fairly new industry, and it is undergoing constant change. The way I think about it, the industry is actually fairly small. There are perhaps three other serious national players that I would be mildly comfortable recommending when A2L is conflicted out of a case. Still, though, these firms are quite different from A2L, so a trial lawyer should expect an entirely different experience as a customer than with A2L. Most of our competition now uses the term “litigation consultant” that we first started using in the mid-1990s. In fact, we may have been the first to use it the term. However, this term means vastly different things from firm to firm. At A2L, we use the term litigation consultant primarily to refer to attorneys on our staff with a creative expertise, trial experience, and an understanding of persuasion science who interface with trial teams to help: develop the visual presentation develop themes, narratives, and strategies for the opening statement work with our jury consultants to help test cases As one can readily discern, these people are truly trusted advisors. They add value as opposed to taking orders.
A trial team might reasonably start a meeting with their litigation graphics consultants by saying, “We’re looking to you to help us design the best litigation graphics possible for this case.” It's a reasonable sounding goal to be sure. But what does it mean really? I think this means a lot of things. Ultimately, it must mean those trial presentation graphics will help win the case. Nothing else matters more. So, when you are talking to your trial graphics consultants, consider what you really intend to communicate about your goals. Here are nine things that I think define the best litigation graphics and how to get to them for your case. Eliminate the Mediocre Litigation Graphics: In my last article, I wrote about how the team with the most litigation graphics will not necessarily emerge the winner. The winner will be the team that refines its PowerPoint deck sufficiently to only show the best litigation graphics. See also 10 Reasons The Litigation Graphics You DO NOT Use Are Important. Your Notes Are Not Your Trial Presentation: All too often, litigators start building their trial presentation by creating text slides in PowerPoint. Typically, many bullet point style slides are left over that hamper persuasion and recall. See Still Think Persuasion is About Talking While Showing Bullet Points? and Don't Use PowerPoint as a Crutch in Trial or Anywhere We're Not Talking About Just Documents: Some people believe that when they've hired a hot-seat operator, they've hired a litigation graphics consultant. Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, they have not. They've hired a technology expert with excellent courtroom experience. However, this person is almost certainly not trained in the persuasion sciences. See Why Trial Tech ≠ Litigation Graphics Beauty is Not the Goal: Most litigation graphics firms focus on form over function. I appreciate great design better than most people, but the best graphics are the ones that are the most persuasive, not the most beautiful. See Litigation Graphics: It's Not a Beauty Contest
Since litigation graphics are so crucial to winning a case, it’s a necessity to put your litigation graphic artist in a position where he or she is most likely to succeed. How should a litigation graphic artist begin his or her work? Here are some possibilities. The artist can listen to the attorneys and experts describe what kind of demonstrative exhibits they want; The artist can take direction from an intermediary like a litigation consultant or jury consultant; The artist can work from the pleadings; The artist can improve upon a deck that's already been produced in draft form; The artist can work from a trial outline; The artist can listen to the attorneys and experts confer with a litigation consultant and ask questions of his or her own, then agree on a plan based on this conversation. After 22 years of doing litigation graphics consulting, I believe the last method is the one that produces the best results. You might ask why. After all, wouldn't it be faster if the artist is simply told what to do, and wouldn’t it be cheaper of the artist is asked to work from a trial outline?
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