by Tony Klapper Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting We spend a lot of time in this blog describing the best practices to use in persuading a jury or judge, explaining why they work, and encouraging lawyers to use them. But what if your best-laid plans go astray? Even the most exhaustive set of trial preparations can go unexpectedly wrong. Hardware can fail, judges can issue unpredictable rulings, courtroom technology can prove incompatible. Our advice is to always double check everything and always have a backup plan. Do you have a PowerPoint that you need to use at trial? Make sure that the video screen you’re going to use is sized correctly for your presentation. Did you bring the right cables? We once had a client who brought the wrong cables and, as the trial began, found that she couldn’t use her PowerPoint. Thankfully, she had a hard copy of her slides and the presentation went just fine. Is there enough RAM in the computer you’ll be using in court to show your exhibits? This may not be the same computer that you have used to prepare the exhibits. At the very least, have those exhibits printed out in case of disaster. And always keep the finalized slides on a flash drive with you. Also, make sure the PowerPoint version is the same or newer on the machine you are going to show it on, since conflicting versions of PowerPoint can sometimes cause issues with your slides.

by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting At A2L, we have worked with thousands of clients over the last several decades. When we first started, almost no trial lawyers had experience with litigation consultants. However, as time went on, the majority of the people we work with have used either jury consultants, litigation graphics consultants, or trial technology in-court specialists at some point in their careers. All these years later, perhaps 20 percent of our clients are first-time litigation consulting users. Not surprisingly, first-time users exhibit many of the same fears that newcomers have shown for decades. Most of these fears are simply fears of the unknown, not actual problems with using litigation consultants. At the core of these fears is a fear of being out of control. But when is a client ever really out of control? Never. We service providers strive at all times to make our clients happy. Still, many fears persist about using litigation consultants the first time. Fear: Costs will spiral out of control. Reality: In my opinion, some of the firms who have failed in our industry helped create this fear. At our firm, we strive to be completely transparent about costs. To that end, we've developed alternative fee arrangements, we've developed loyalty programs, and we are deadly serious about telling our clients everything they need to know about costs. Fear: I'll be revealed for who I really am. Reality: Most good leaders struggle with imposter syndrome to a degree, myself included. In my experience the best litigation leaders not only question their approach regularly but they invite that type of questioning. See, 10 Criteria that Define Great Trial Teams. Fear: I don't want to be told what to do. Reality: Only a non-savvy litigation consultant would tell you what to do. Remember, you're the client. Yes, winning is a priority but so is building and maintaining a relationship with you.

by Alex Brown Director of Operations A2L Consulting While I was working on a case with one of our clients, it came to light that the opposition was using a trial technician for trial. At first our client did not want to bear the expense and did not feel that the case lent itself to the use of a full-time “hot seat” operator. I asked the client a few questions: What percentage of potential jurors carry a smartphone? Of that group, how many have tablets? Of those people who are “connected,” how many will be impressed by the flash and professionalism of a skilled trial tech? As you would expect, the numbers were high. It was obvious to everyone that if you are on a case and one side is using trial software, you have to match the other side or be left in the dust. People expect to see technology in the courtroom, appreciate the effort if it is made, and do not understand if one side does not use it. If your opposition is using modern technology and you are using the overhead and drawing on flip charts, your message will be lost. In this instance, we helped our client find a solution that did not permit the opposition to make it look unprepared and unprofessional. Here are 10 good rules for using trial presentation software to the best effect. Provide training. Make sure if you are going to use it, know how to use it or find someone that does. The software is designed to make your presentation effective and seamless. If you are not getting that result, bring in someone who can. Use the right tool. Sanction, TrialPad, TrialDirector (laptop or iPad), and OnQue are the top platforms today. Use the one that’s best for you. Ninety percent of trial teams that use this type of software use TrialDirector, simply because it works. This should not take away from the other platforms. Sanction has improved, and OnQue is the new kid on the block and seems to handle video much better than the alternatives. But comfort is paramount, so use the platform that is most comfortable to the one presenting. Remember, you are not the one running the presentation. They are there to support you.

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 Ryan H. Flax, Esq. (Former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting & General Counsel A2L Consulting I’ve passed another anniversary at A2L Consulting and in my time as a litigation consultant I’ve been both surprised and reassured about the state of the litigation business and its players (I also wrote about my surprises upon beginning my career as a litigation consultant). I’ve seen both the very best and quite bad litigators in action and have consulted for both. Although some litigators don’t live up to my high standards, I’m impressed by many litigators as both professionals and people. Here are seven of my observations over these years that I think might help you in your practice. Many Lawyers Confuse Chronology With Storytelling It is almost universally accepted that storytelling is important to engaging an audience (including a jury) and that framing a client’s case as a compelling story is key to doing your best at trial, particularly in opening statements. But more often than not, when I ask a litigation team what their client's story is, rather than explain “why we’re really here” as they would to a jury and illustrate some conflict and emotionally valuable moral that is critical to juror engagement, they rattle off some chronological series of events that led to a legal injury to their client or some misconstrued relationship by the opposing party. These are not stories and presenting a case framed this way, while possibly interesting to a legal scholar, is not compelling to a juror. I’m surprised that so many smart litigators fall into the chronology trap and forsake emotional connection to engage jurors. I don’t advise pandering to a jury or excessive emoting by a litigator, but for a jury to care about you and your client and generate the stamina jurors need for a trial, litigators must tap into their emotional brains. This is not done by an information dump, a calendar, or using a lot of words. A story answers the question posed above – why are we here today, in this courtroom? A story also has all the stuff you learned in grade school: a beginning, middle, climax, and end, characters, setting, theme, and moral. Some Lawyers Focus Too Much on Too Small Things It’s easy for litigators (even more so for the associates doing the day-to-day stuff) to over-focus on every detail. The prospect of overlooking a potentially key piece of evidence or being surprised by an unknown fact exposed by opposing counsel is frightening for attorneys (it was for me), so we often wind up thinking way too much about every little thing in a case. This is called being “in the weeds,” and when you’re there it’s exceedingly difficult to escape without help. It happens with the selection of evidence, with witness prep, and even with the development of graphics, where sometimes counsel wants to very carefully think over every aspect, e.g., choosing what font style and color palette and slide aspect ratio will best work for their case. On each of these things, I urge counsel to take a step back and delegate where possible so they can focus on the BIG PICTURE. The best first-chair litigators do this naturally, and the rest of us need to do it deliberately. Attorney time and brainpower should be spent on figuring out what it will take to win. Let litigation graphics consultants decide what font works best for your opening statement presentation. It will be a relief when you do.

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.