Imagine asking AI to turn your opening statement into a polished presentation. It returns a handsome deck: coordinated colors, matching title bars, tidy lists, and an illustration on every third slide. You might think you have just eliminated the need for a litigation graphics consultant. You have generated slides. You have not acquired the expertise that makes trial graphics persuasive. The hard part of trial graphics is deciding what jurors need to understand, what might keep them from understanding it, and how each visual will help you change that. A finished-looking deck does not answer those questions. In How Many Persuasion Errors Can You Spot in This Slide?, I deliberately assembled a terrible slide to illustrate familiar presentation mistakes. AI gives us a new reason to revisit that exercise: it can make those same mistakes look much more professional. My concern is the assumption that familiar presentation conventions must be effective. Common practice is a poor substitute for persuasion expertise. An attorney can ask for a professional-looking deck and receive exactly that, including familiar design choices a litigation graphics specialist would reject. The attorney may even praise the very features that need to change. The problem is deeper than proofreading the output. To recognize a persuasion error, you first have to understand persuasion. Legal expertise does not automatically supply expertise in visual attention, audience comprehension, or the coordination of graphics and spoken advocacy. Here are 22 reasons that using AI to build your own trial slides is a poor substitute for hiring specialists. 1. AI can make every slide look equally important The same title bar. The same layout. The same amount of text. A routine background fact and the central contradiction in the case arrive wearing identical clothes. Where is the signal that something important has changed? Consistency should help jurors follow the argument; it should not flatten its emphasis. A litigation graphics specialist designs those moments deliberately. An attorney evaluating the deck for consistency may approve the very sameness that undermines them. 2. AI can eliminate useful visual surprise A document excerpt followed by a photograph, a comparison, or a single consequential number changes the viewing experience. That change can be purposeful. As I argued in Could Surprise Be One of Your Best Visual Persuasion Tools?, variation belongs in the trial team's toolkit. A deck that treats uniformity as an overriding goal can design those opportunities away. Random decoration is no substitute for a deliberate change in emphasis. 3. AI cannot choose what to downplay without your strategy Sometimes an unfavorable fact needs to be acknowledged accurately without receiving a dramatic visual reveal. A restrained presentation may be appropriate. But that is a judgment about this case, this audience, and your credibility. If every slide is visually subdued, the presentation may also downplay your strongest evidence. Persuasion expertise is what distinguishes intentional restraint from an accidentally forgettable presentation.
Trial preparation has a way of turning capable lawyers into reluctant experts in everything. One minute you are refining a cross-examination. The next, you are moving text boxes around a slide, troubleshooting a video, or trying to turn three years of discovery into an opening statement someone can follow in thirty minutes. Several of our most-read articles this year ask whether all of that belongs on the trial lawyer’s desk. Others tackle an equally demanding problem: what happens inside a juror’s head when the presentation begins? How do you hold attention, challenge an early assumption, or help someone understand why one event led to another? 10. Simplifying Your Opening Statement to Its Core You know the case. Can a juror explain it after hearing your opening? Part two of our Persuasion Occasion podcast series with Perkins Coie examines the work of reducing an opening statement to its essential story. It asks lawyers to think about what jurors will understand, retain, and eventually repeat. For a trial team staring at an overgrown draft, this is a useful starting point: identify the central idea before deciding which details deserve to stay. 9. The Simplest Storytelling Trick for Persuasion Might Have Come from South Park An unlikely source offers a remarkably practical editing test. Look at the transitions between the major events in your opening. Do they amount to “and then,” or can you connect them with “but” and “therefore”? This article explores how conflict and consequence give a story momentum. It is especially useful when an opening contains all the necessary facts but still feels like a recitation. Try the test on one page of your outline and see where the connections need work. 8. How to Break Juror Confirmation Bias (Using a Surprisingly Simple Trick) What might make a juror pause before fitting the next fact into an opinion already formed? Part three of our Perkins Coie podcast series explores the possibility of using a carefully chosen visual surprise or moment of difficulty to encourage closer attention. The article presents this as a technique to consider selectively; it also acknowledges the potential for distraction. Its most useful question is whether your presentation invites jurors to examine an assumption they might otherwise leave untouched.
In high-stakes litigation, a great trial graphic doesn’t merely “support” the narrative — it is the narrative. It is the difference between jurors leaning in or tuning out, between a judge following your logic or silently asking themselves, What is counsel even trying to say? After more than thirty years of building litigation graphics for some of the most sophisticated trial teams in the country, I’ve noticed a pattern: the teams who win consistently follow the same three core rules, whether consciously or not. Conversely, the teams who struggle with persuading lay decision-makers tend to violate these rules — sometimes subtly, sometimes flagrantly. These rules are not aesthetic preferences. They are grounded in cognitive psychology, attention span research, and the simple reality that most jurors don’t think the way lawyers do. Here are the three rules: Every litigation graphic should be understandable without explanation, and each should convey only one short sentence of meaning. Never — not once — read the long-form text on a litigation graphic.
As the mattress sales wrap up from Presidents' Day, I thought it might be valuable to pause and reflect on this little-known gift from the first president. Apparently, in his youth, Washington was assigned a penmanship exercise of copying the rules of civility as drafted by others before him, and perhaps he editorialized in that process. Everyone likes to think that a 16-year-old Washington wrote these rules, but I think it is more likely that they were associated with Jesuits hundreds of years earlier. I've always felt a special connection to George Washington, having grown up on property that was once his farm, part of his Mount Vernon estate. In my downtime, I collect and write about historical items related to the history of the Alexandria area and George Washington. See https://ourhistorymuseum.org/blog/tag/george-washington. In this lengthy article, I have rewritten these rules of civility to apply to courtroom presentation, persuasion, jury consulting, courtroom technology, and general decorum for the trial lawyer. My general disposition as a litigation consultant is to win at all costs, so many of these rules are also aspirational. Unless the original rule fits, I am presenting my courtroom-translated rule, followed by the original rule. "George Washington's" 110 Trial Lawyer Rules of Civility 1. Every action done in the courtroom ought to be with some sign of respect to those who are present. That especially means not reading bullet points to your judge or juror. It wastes their time. See 5 Alternatives to Persuasion Killing Bullet Points From Our Litigation Consultants. Original rule: Every action done in company ought to be with some sign of respect, to those that are present. 2. When in a courtroom, don't do anything embarrassing with technology or otherwise. See Today's Tech Failure at the George Zimmerman Trial Takes Center Stage and 12 Ways to Avoid a Trial Technology Superbowl-style Courtroom Blackout Original rule: When in company, put not your hands to any part of the body, not usually discovered. 3. Show nothing to opposing counsel during opening statements that (unexpectedly) draws an objection. See 7 Times When Litigation Graphics Hurt Youand21 Secrets From an Opening Statement Guru. Original rule: Show nothing to your friend that may affright him.
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