The old-fashioned deposition, with the court reporter recording every word and producing a written transcript, is giving way to the video deposition, which permits a jury and judge to actually see the witness and get a feeling for his or her style and credibility that can’t be obtained by looking at a printed page. In addition, the witness’s body language, which was completely opaque in a written deposition, is now available to the jury.
A recent study about the best use of litigation graphics during trial reveals some new insights. This study was conducted by Persuasion Strategies, a litigation consulting firm that is part of Holland & Hart, a law firm. The study team was led by Ken Broda-Bahm, a leader in the art of visual presentation in the courtroom. With a doctorate in speech communication that emphasizes rhetoric and legal communication, Dr. Broda-Bahm is a genuine expert in jury consulting.
We often hear from clients or prospective clients that it won’t help them if they look like a big company that is attempting to overwhelm or dazzle its opponents with technology. Jurors won’t buy that sort of stuff, we are told, even from a litigant that is actually a large company.
TrialDirector, a trial presentation software package produced by InData, is an indispensable aid to the presentation of electronic and other evidence at trial. There is a reason why this product has claimed the majority of the market share for trial presentation software for more than 10 years: It can actually make it interesting for a jury or other fact-finder to listen to a witness testify about corporate balance sheets, long-ago emails, and other documents that can be fatally boring and lose the attention of the fact-finder.
by Ken Lopez As litigation consultants, jury consultants, trial technology consultants and litigation graphics consultants, we have the opportunity to share our decades of experience in over 10,000 cases, working with litigators from all major law firms, with our litigation clients every day. Clearly, this is a valuable service, and I believe great litigators become better litigators for having worked with our firm.
by Daniel Carey, Senior Trial Technician, A2L Consulting I'm in Chicago and halfway through a one-month arbitration. Seated across from me is opposing counsel. Steve Jobs would have been proud. In the conference room where the arbitration is being held, four out of five attorneys are using iPads, propped in both landscape and portrait, all with Bluetooth keyboards. A Bluetooth keyboard is a wireless keyboard, either similar to a normal wireless keyboard or a pocket-size device that projects a full-size keyboard through infrared technology onto any flat surface. In my last case, in Fairfax, Va., our counsel placed his iPad upon the ELMO (a device normally used to digitally project hard copy documents). The judge asked on the record, "Do you have an app for that?" There is an app for nearly everything these days. The world has changed, and so has my work as a trial technician. As you probably know, a trial technician (sometimes called trial consultant, trial tech or hot-seat operator) goes from trial to trial (or arbitration or hearing) providing litigation support services to the trial team. Specifically, I am normally responsible for: building the exhibit and document database prior to trial; cutting deposition clips and syncing them with a transcript; working with counsel to prep witnesses to work with an electronic presentation; setting up the war room and courtroom with electronics; working to finalize the documentary and demonstrative presentations; running the electronics in the courtroom so that any piece of evidence is accessible instantly; making on-the-fly demonstratives to be used with a witness on cross; running the demonstrative and documentary evidence presentation; All of these tasks ordinarily need to be done on little sleep, and in the trial technician profession, we are not allowed to show stress – ever. In fact, our jobs as trial technicians are to absorb stress. The same is true for technological change in our business. It is inevitable, and it is something that we must absorb. The iPad is bringing rapid change just as PowerPoint once did. It will not be long before jurors are given iPads to use throughout trial (Facebook-disabled, of course). As Peter Summerill, a Utah attorney and author of the MacLitigator blog, has written, “At trial, the iPad really shines. Trial technology should be transparent. This means that it should not appear to the jury as (1) overly flashy; or, (2) a complete headache and a distraction to the attorney. Apple has created a product which facilitates presentation of evidence without getting in the way and does so in a completely unassuming fashion.” Over the last year our technology team has pioneered ways to publish ebriefs on an iPad and to view all case documents and proposed demonstrative exhibits via an iPad app. Now I am seeing iPads spread quickly into courtrooms and arbitration rooms around the country. It is an exciting time, and it is a great time to be a trial technician and a great time to try cases.
As the Washington Business Journal recently wrote, the International Trade Commission (ITC), once an obscure federal agency, has become the epicenter of high-end international patent law in recent years. Its docket is rapidly growing, and its cases can be worth sums in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.
In our 16 years in the trial presentation business, and after consulting on more than 10,000 cases, we still hear litigators concerned that their trial presentation/litigation graphics might somehow look “too slick” and will distract the jurors, or will somehow focus attention on the relative wealth of our client who is able to afford “fancy graphics.” In the early 1990s, this was a valid question. No one had used PowerPoint, no one had a cell phone – let alone a smart phone -- few people had personal computers, and most of those had black screens with green text. That is no longer the case. Technology has penetrated into every part of the United States and indeed into most of the world. A 2011 report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project indicates that 85 percent of U.S. adults own a cellphone, 52 percent own a laptop computer, four percent own a tablet, and only nine percent do not own any of these or other devices covered in the study. Those numbers will only increase. According to Robert Gaskins, the creator of PowerPoint, more than 500 million people worldwide use PowerPoint, with over 30 million PowerPoint presentations being made every day. Trial consultant Robb Helt, at the end of a trial in rural Arkansas, was able to talk with the jurors about the use of trial presentation technology/trial techncians in their just-completed trial. Helt found that the theory that jurors are uncomfortable with technology had been “blown away” by this “down home” jury. These jurors were not only comfortable with trial presentation technology – they expected to see it.
Electronic briefs (e-Briefs) made their first appearance on the legal stage in the 1990s, but today’s e-briefs are far ahead of their predecessors in terms of technology and usability. E-briefs are electronic versions of ordinary paper-based court filings. But instead of providing lengthy, thick and repetitive appendices and materials at the end of the brief, a lawyer filing an e-brief simply inserts hyperlinks to attachments from the main document. This has many advantages, and surely at least one of these advantages changes everything you ever knew about ebriefs.
by Ken Lopez No trial presentation exhibit specialist can perform any better than his or her tools. Although the judge and jury aren’t usually aware of what software the trial consultant is using, the choice of presentation software is essential to the success of the consultant, and ultimately to the success of the case. Over the last decade, presenting demonstrative evidence has usually meant using PowerPoint. In the hands of an expert trial consultant, PowerPoint is an extremely flexible tool. As we said earlier this year, for talented information designers, PowerPoint is a blank canvas that can be filled with works of presentation art. Among major law firms, PowerPoint still maintains nearly a 100 percent market share. After all, if something has been shown to work over and over again, there is every reason for a trial lawyer to continue using it rather than trying something new and unproven.
Litigation graphics can be especially useful in aviation cases. Nearly every juror has been an airline passenger at some point, and jurors know that while most flights are uneventful, mistakes committed by airline employees or others can result in serious injury or death. A good trial exhibit will illustrate exactly what happened on the flight and will properly evoke people’s concerns about flying, without being improperly inflammatory. For example, in two high-profile airline trials in the 1990s, using only the technology that was available at that time, we produced highly persuasive trial animations and other litigation graphics.
[See updated 2013 article by clicking here: 21 Ingenious Ways to Research Your Judge]
As litigation has become more complex and technology has advanced over the years, a new profession has emerged – that of trial technician. This profession is relatively new in the legal marketplace, so much so that the title still varies considerably: These individuals can be called trial consultant, courtroom technology specialist, hot seat operator or simply trial tech. By any name, trial technicians perform three key litigation tasks: Organizing and preparing documents, video and other evidence to be used at trial. Setting up the war room and courtroom electronics consistent with local court rules. Running the trial presentation software and equipment during trial so that trial counsel can see any document, video or exhibit on a momentʼs notice and so that the presentation runs so flawlessly that the fact-finder focuses only on the evidence, not the method of presentation. Excellent trial technicians are not easy to find and are rarely available on short notice. Animators at Law has offered trial technician services to litigation teams around the world since the mid-1990s. This article summarizes some of what we have learned in 16 years, but, for a more comprehensive 20-point pre-engagement checklist, I encourage you to download our free whitepaper: 20 Things You Must Know Before Engaging Your Next Trial Technician, Trial Consultant or Hot Seat Operator. There are several key considerations to appreciate when hiring a trial tech for your next litigation matter. First, quality varies widely, as does price. One should expect to pay between $125 and $400 per hour with an average rate of $200 per hour. Hours worked per day will usually be between 10 and 20 during trial. To help trial teams manage cost predictably, our firm recently pioneered flat rate pricing for trial technician services. In selecting a trial tech, there is no substitute for real courtroom experience. Experienced trial techs have survived technology failures, power failures and weather-related failures many times over. Great trial technicians have successfully run dozens or hundreds of trials and hearings and can provide the names of those cases and names of the attorneys involved. When interviewing, as you would for any vendor, check at least three references. Great trial technicians are often in the center of the court but are never the center of attention. Part of the trial tech’s skill set must be an ability to comfortably disappear into the background. When he or she is doing the job right, no one is looking at him or her. Outstanding trial technicians must be true Renaissance technology people. Not only must they be able to authoritatively run the latest versions of trial presentation software like Sanction or Trial Director, they must be able to sort out complex versioning issues with PowerPoint, diagnose hard drive problems, mass-rename files, handle unheard-of image formats and much more. Again, experience makes the difference. For more information about this emerging profession and a pre-engagement hiring discussion checklist, see our free downloadable article offering a 20 point trial technician skill set and trait guide. Trial technicians add an enormously disproportionate amount of value to a trial team with the budget to hire one. Instead of focusing on the availability of documents and evidence, the proper functioning of courtroom and war room technology and overcoming technological hiccups in real time, litigators can focus on careful strategic trial preparation of arguments, experts and witnesses. With some carefully planned discussions, litigation teams evaluating the addition of a trial technician to the courtroom support team can virtually guarantee success.
I have had the great pleasure of working closely with hundreds of world's best litigators since 1995. One common theme they communicate is that they see simplifying their case, prior to walking into the courtroom, as part of their job. Today, I am writing to share about a 'new' tool designed quite precisely for this purpose. The new tool is a modern software version of a decades-old technique modeled on centuries-old principles. In general this tool facilitates the visualization of complex and interrelated ideas. Specifically, I am talking about a process called mind mapping. Mind mapping is a 60s-era-sounding term for an activity that seems, at first glance, like it must have certainly been born on the left-coast. In a sense, both of those things are true. It was in fact developed in the era between the 50s and 70s, and it was born on a left coast of sorts. However, this 'left coast' is really the western suburbs of London. Regardless of mind mapping's nonconformist origins, I believe it has a place in the toolkit of the modern litigator. After all, many thought-leading litigation trends were born in California or places like it (e.g. demonstrative evidence, jury research, courtroom animation, etc.). A small version of a 30 inch x 90 inch litigation mind map is shown below. I encourage you to download a full-sized .pdf version of the actual chart to get a feel for how it is laid out. This sample mind map is based on a group of cases where we have used mind mapping as a system for quickly understanding a complex case in a short period of time, brainstorming a trial presentation approach and laying out specific exhibits. In this chart, green circles represent likely demonstrative exhibits, red boxes represent problems with our case that require additional strategic attention and the yellow boxes contain the background information on the case, trial team and strategy. The same approach we take for trial graphics development can easily be taken by a trial team organizing a complex case with many experts, theories and potential trial strategies. In addition to the obvious organizational benefits, the beauty of using this approach is just how easily one can pick up where one left off. I have gone a month or more between deeply complicated meetings and been able to start precisely where we left off without spending time trying to re-teach the team everything that was discussed weeks or months before. This is one of those benefits that I think one has to experience to believe. While litigation-specific tools do exist that offer a some of the features in today's mind mapping software, I prefer using a flexible tool that works very well. I have used two products: 1) Tony Buzan's iMindMap (he is considered the father of modern mind mapping); and 2) Mindjet's MindManager. I prefer the latter, as I find it to be a bit more business-oriented. When working with our firm on trial presentation strategy, we will likely be using mind mapping either internally or overtly. However, we are interested in testing this approach with a trial team at the front-end of a case rather than within the time period we are more typically consulting with the trial team (6 months prior to trial). If you would be interested in testing this technique with your trial team, we are willing to do so gratis for a limited number of trial teams working complicated cases with at least $10 million at stake. The output will be a wall chart for your team that you can refer to on an ongoing basis.
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