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 Well, no one ever said a trial was like a day at the beach. Except that there are a lot of similarities, if you look hard enough. I'm just back from an annual two-week family vacation at the Outer Banks of North Carolina. My wife and I have seven-year-old triplet girls. My friend says that doesn’t sound too much like a vacation, and his point is well taken in many ways. Although anyone who has done this type of trip with young kids will have some memories that seem as if they came from a Norman Rockwell painting, there are plenty of stressful or crazy moments. Fortunately, with time, the human brain can focus on the good memories. This type of vacation time is chaotic, stressful, and, yes, fulfilling. And that reminds me an awful lot of what I do every day — high-stakes litigation. Let’s consider how these two events are similar. 1) Other stuff comes up. I worked one 16-hour day at the beach. I had to. Two other managers were traveling, and one was slammed. I had to pitch in even if it was from 350 miles away. A long trial is no different. Often, you have to focus on other clients for a bit and you must plan for that possibility at trial. 2) Breakdowns happen. My clunky old Range Rover broke down at the beach. My wife was not pleased, but I’m always prepared for such an event. I have towing coverage that brought the car home, and I enjoyed driving on the beach in a four-door Jeep Wrangler instead. Things break down at trial too, often at the least opportune times. If you're not mentally prepared for that, if you haven’t planned for it, you're going to look bad at trial. See, 12 Ways to Avoid a Trial Technology Superbowl-style Courtroom Blackout. 3) Surprise is the key. My daughters are well behaved, but they need to see the unexpected from time to time, whether it’s an unusual shell on the beach or a funny kind of ketchup bottle. If they don’t have that, they become moody and distracted. Judges and jurors react similarly at trial. If you don't surprise them, they become bored and antsy. Learn the power of surprise. See, Could Surprise Be One of Your Best Visual Persuasion Tools?
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 Ryan H. Flax (Former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting We strongly advocate that counsel must use a visual presentation to support his or her oral argument at trial (and anywhere they need to be persuasive). This most commonly happens during opening statements and closing arguments at trial and the dominant format for such presentations is PowerPoint – a very good tool. However, like cutting your own hair or doing your own dental work, we must again caution you that you must really know what you’re doing because your case may depend on it. On January 22, 2015, the Supreme Court of the State of Washington published its opinion in State v. Walker, overturning the State Prosecutor’s conviction of an accused murderer because the attorney went too far with his demonstrative evidence in closing. A murderer has potentially been freed because, in the Court’s view, counsel was inflammatory in his presentation and “appealed to passion and prejudice” of the jury. Certainly as zealous advocates we do want to appeal to the passion of jurors on some level. We need their emotions to be in sync with the law and evidence, but what might be too much so as to prejudice the proceedings? Let’s explore the Washington Supreme Court’s opinion to see.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting We East Coasters have a love-hate relationship with snow, and the snow moving into the Northeast today may be one for the record books - particularly around Boston. It will dominate the news for days - and it probably should. An incredibly large number of people will be impacted by this particular storm. Under or next to that red line on the map where the storm is forecast to hit, you'll find roughly 20% of the U.S. population living on roughly 3% of the country's land, half of the hedge funds, one third of the headquarters of Fortune 500 firms and — in the states under the red line, about 35% of the country's and, hard as it may be to believe, about 25% of the world's lawyers! A blizzard disrupts our lives. It can feel tedious, it creates confusion, and it generates a lot of hard work — sort of like a trial. Not all trials are blizzard-like, but some surely are. Here are 21 ways some trials are like a blizzard and how to avoid white-out conditions in your courtroom.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting There are many annual surveys that help rank law firms, specialty legal training programs and legal vendors and consultants. The annual Best of The National Law Journal is the crown jewel of these surveys. A2L Consulting is honored to have been nominated and voted best litigation graphics provider and best jury consultants in this and other polls many times before. By voting in such surveys, I believe we make our industry better by acknowledging those who contribute to it the most. While I would certainly be thrilled, honored, and grateful it if you would vote for A2L on questions #58 and #61 in the categories of Best Demonstrative Evidence Provider and Best Jury Consultants, I think simply voting is very valuable for all of us. Here is a link to the survey that is only open for a little bit more time. Note, not all questions have to be answered, but you do have to click the "Done" button at the end. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2015BestofNLJ
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting In recent years, I have seen in-house counsel become increasingly involved in litigation. Gone are the days when in-house would simply hire the top name litigator and hope for the best. Today, in-house counsel help determine trial strategy, they closely manage budget, they assist in choosing litigation support consultants, and they sometimes take a leadership role on the trial team. However, since trials are relatively rare and not many in-house counsel are trial lawyers themselves, how are in-house counsel supposed to effectively contribute in a litigation environment beyond simply managing the purse-strings? Enter this new and free book, The In-House Counsel Litigation Toolkit, a first of its kind for A2L Consulting. We have published more than a dozen wildly popular books over the last several years that have been collectively downloaded more than 100,000 times. However, this new 172-page book is the first A2L book designed for in-house counsel and their outside counsel. It contains 50 hand-curated articles focused on litigation and the role of modern in-house counsel.
Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting The relationship between in-house counsel and outside litigation counsel has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. Technology and the Internet have been the driving forces for many of the changes. Technology growth has forced outside litigation counsel into a quasi-technology consultant role in the way they deal with e-discovery and case management. Technology has made litigation more complex as the underlying subject matter of cases has become more complex. The availability of information via the Internet has made in-house counsel a more savvy shopper and a better informed manager. Technology has surely changed the way outside litigation counsel tries cases and has forced trial counsel to be trial-technology savvy. There are many more examples of how the fast flow of information is altering the balance of power between in-house and outside counsel, but you get the idea. Reflecting these changing times, the 25-point list below offers useful best-practices that in-house counsel should be demanding from outside litigation counsel.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Since 2011, hundreds of thousands of people have visited A2L's website and industry-leading litigation blog, The Litigation Consulting Report. They come to research A2L's litigation support services, they come to learn how to improve their results as litigators and litigation support professionals, and many come to download a free litigation e-book or watch a free litigation webinar.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting
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