by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting In our role as trial consultants, we frequently work with some of the top law firm litigators in the nation, as well as with in-house counsel for some of the nation’s major companies. Ideally, we form a cohesive team that works seamlessly to provide outstanding trial representation and to win cases. Occasionally, we find that law firm litigators are engaging in bad habits that can increase inefficiency, cost the client money, and decrease the chances of winning at trial. Here are seven of them. 1. Lawyers designing PowerPoint slides. Anyone who went to law school can of course use PowerPoint. Generating PowerPoint slides is not difficult, and lawyers are smart. Many lawyers can even make PowerPoint slides that look nice. But: a. It's not about pretty slides, it's about effective slides, and the rules for how to create those take years to learn. See Litigation Graphics: It's Not a Beauty Contest b. A lawyer doing slides costs the same or more per hour than a litigation graphics expert doing slides. Classically, you could cut your own hair, but why would you? See How Valuable is Your Time vs. Litigation Support's Time? c. A lawyer creating slides does not know the tricks of the trade. See Trial Graphics Dilemma: Why Can't I Make My Own Slides? (Says Lawyer) d. A lawyer creating slides will likely tell a chronological story instead of an effective story. See Don't Be Just Another Timeline Trial Lawyer e. A law firm might claim to have in-house litigation graphics expertise (See 13 Reasons Law Firm Litigation Graphics Departments Have Bad Luck). But ask yourself: How many trials does that law firm do per year? For even the largest firms, that answer may be a couple dozen. How many cases does that lone artist work on? A small percentage of what is already a small number? Contrast that with a litigation consulting firm with graphics expertise that might do 50 or 100 trials per year concentrated among a handful of key staff. See With So Few Trials, Where Do You Find Trial Experience Now?
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting A new friend of mine had been the head of litigation at a Fortune 500 firm known for frequently being involved in litigation. He said something interesting to me earlier this week: “You guys put the best information out there. You synthesize litigation information better than anyone else. But does it translate into business for you?” He said that last part with a bit of skepticism in his voice. That was an “aha” moment for me. I realized that I really haven’t talked much about how helpful our blogging has been to our business (and might be for yours), so I want to share some of the amazing facts about it. A month ago, we celebrated our 7,500th subscriber who signed up to be notified of new articles in this Litigation Consulting Report Blog. In just four and a half years, we have gone from zero subscribers to 7,500. We have progressed from 800 visitors to our website each month to about 20,000. We've gone from a small handful of downloads from our website each month to about 2,000 per month. We've gone from a couple dozen published articles to more than 500. Even the American Bar Association has called our blog one of the very best. That is amazing, and I've shared most of that information in some form before. Here's the most important piece I've never shared, and it's what I shared with my new litigation friend: Just about every business day, sometimes many times per day, someone asks about working with us as a result of reading something on our blog.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Welcome back from summer (to most), and welcome to the busy fall/winter litigation season. This blog, The Litigation Consulting Report, is now just about 4 ½ years old. In that time, we have written nearly 500 posts on dozens of trial and presentation-related subjects, including everything from TED talks to Reptile trial techniques to voir dire best-practices. We've earned accolades, won awards, won countless trials, and we have steadily grown our number of subscribers year after year, and I'm especially thrilled to say that we've just signed up our 7,500th blog subscriber! Every subscription is free, and perhaps that is part of the reason it took us less than a year to grow our community from 5,000 subscribers in September 2014 to 7,500 subscribers in September 2015 — a 50% increase. To celebrate reaching 7,500 blog subscribers, today we’re publishing (as a free download) this collection of our very best articles to date called, A2L Consulting's Top 75 Articles of All Time. By "very best," I mean that our readers have, by choosing which articles they read most, told us which articles they think are the best. On the Web, your clicks are your votes. We’re thrilled to receive this feedback from you.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting At A2L Consulting, we have just published our latest e-book – the third edition of the Litigation Support Professional's Trial Toolkit. It's 262 pages long, contains 88 articles and is completely complimentary to download. This new e-book will be indispensable to any litigator or litigation support professional who wants a summary of the latest thinking in the fields of trial technology, trial graphics, and litigation support. In this book, we try to demystify the craft of the trial technician, with nitty-gritty discussions of how trial consulting firms do what they do, especially on a tight budget. We present ideas for seamless trial presentations that can be built, if not on a shoestring, on a budget far smaller than one might anticipate. Since the art of trial presentation is often best described as a story-telling venture, we give you the latest on the best story-telling techniques, including 16 trial presentation tips from classic Hollywood movies. We also provide 13 reasons why it’s not a good idea to do your trial preparation at the last minute, 12 great ways to combine oral and visual presentations, and five questions you should always ask in voir dire.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting
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 Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting In case you missed it, the New York Attorney General's Office dropped a bombshell this week. They have accused major retailers including Wal-Mart, Target, Walgreen's and GNC of knowingly selling supplements that contain either none of what is advertised (an incredible 80% of the time) or something else entirely. The herbal supplement industry is estimated to have close to $100 billion in annual sales. That's about five times the revenue of all AmLaw 200 law firms combined. Once I saw the New York Times piece reporting on this issue, I wanted to learn more about what this might mean for litigators. Fortunately, I knew exactly who to speak with. Below is an interview with Dr. David Schwartz, head of scientific support to counsel at Innovative Science Solutions. He describes his role as something of a scientific detective, regularly helping ISS’s clients defend and support pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, medical devices, foods, and dietary supplements in the courts, the regulatory arena, and the market place. In this six-minute interview, Dr. Schwartz shares his outlook for how this issue might unfold in the courts.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting
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