by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Nearly 200,000 visits were made to A2L Consulting's Litigation Consulting Report Blog in 2015. With every page view, our readers express their opinion of the value of each article. Those that are the most valuable get the most page views. Today, I'm happy to share the very best articles of 2015 as chosen by our readers' reading habits. This year, we posted 90 new articles, and that brings our total blog library to nearly 500 articles. If you are involved in litigation or have to persuade a skeptical audience of anything, these articles are an incredibly valuable resource that are available at absolutely no charge. As we approach our five-year anniversary of this blog, I am very proud of our accomplishments. I'm excited to report that we now have 7,800 subscribers, some articles have been viewed more than 30,000 times, and the ABA named ours one of the top blogs in the legal industry. Not bad for our first five years. In 2015, these 15 articles below stood out as the very top articles of 2015. Articles focused on PowerPoint, litigation graphics, persuasion, and voir dire continue to dominate our readers' interest. Each of these articles can be easily tweeted or shared on Linkedin using the buttons below the article title. All are free to enjoy. I wish you the very best 2016, and here is a link to claim a free subscription so that you get notified when these articles are published. 15. How to Make PowerPoint Trial Timelines Feel More Like a Long Document 14. A Surprising New Reason to Repeat Yourself at Trial 13. Lawyer Delivers Excellent PowerPoint Presentation 12. With So Few Trials, Where Do You Find Trial Experience Now? 11. 5 Ways to Maximize Persuasion During Opening Statements - Part 1 10. How to Apply Cialdini's 6 Principles of Persuasion in the Courtroom 9. 9 Things In-House Counsel Say About Outside Litigation Counsel 8. Repelling the Reptile Trial Strategy - Pt 4 - 7 Reasons the Tactic Still Works 7. 10 Ways to Lose Voir Dire 6. Repelling the Reptile Strategy - Part 3 - Understanding the Bad Science 5. How Much Text on a PowerPoint Slide is Too Much? 4. Repelling the Reptile Trial Strategy - Part 5 - 12 Ways to Kill the Reptile 3. Repelling the Reptile Trial Strategy - Pt 2 - 10 Ways to Spot the Reptile 2. Repelling the Reptile Trial Strategy as Defense Counsel - Part 1 1. Why the Color of a Dress Matters to Litigators and Litigation Graphics
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting The title of this article shouldn't sound like a breaking news headline, but let's be honest, it does. Most PowerPoint presentations are bullet-point-riddled text-heavy electronic projections of a speaker's notes. Most lawyer-delivered PowerPoint presentations are the same — just with even more text and smaller fonts. As a result, a significant majority of speakers (and lawyers) using PowerPoint presentations are hard to understand and dramatically less persuasive than they could be. There are exceptions of course. The kinds of litigators and others who become clients of A2L Consulting's litigation graphics division are the first exceptions. They typically learn the rules of effective presentation and high-level visual persuasion based on well-established neuroscience principles and rigorous psychological studies. The second exception is Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor. I had the pleasure of seeing him deliver a presentation at TEDx MidAtlantic recently. Whether or not one agrees with his message, almost everyone can learn a lot from his presentation style and the methods he used to achieve visual persuasion. Here is a video of that presentation:
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting In my last post, 7 Bad Habits of Law Firm Litigators, I wrote about the problems caused by litigators who, even when they have an adequate budget, design their own PowerPoint slides for trial. I've seen this result in: demonstrative evidence being excluded for using inappropriate tactics; demonstrative evidence being used for outright misconduct; opportunities being missed to use persuasion tricks of the trade; lawyers getting stuck in a chronological recitation of the facts; an overall lack of anything memorable or creative being presented; the use of out-of-date techniques like bullet points that damage credibility; and many other things that, as I said a few Halloween's ago, can lead to a deMONSTERative evidence nightmare. Well, there's new problem to add to this list of challenges faced by litigators who design their own slides, and it was just revealed by a brand new study conducted by the Missouri School of Journalism and the Washington Post.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting I want to share the results of an interesting study that I recently read. I believe that it has implications for how we present information in the courtroom. It appears in the October 2015 Journal of Experimental Psychology, and is entitled Knowledge Does Not Protect Against Illusory Truth. As experts in the persuasion business, we have long known about the power of repetition. We use it as a specific rhetorical technique during opening statements. We incorporate repetition when creating demonstrative evidence. We even choose to repeat the same message in many different formats (trial boards, PowerPoint, scale models) to reach different types of learners. We do this because repetition helps people remember things, it signals that something is important, and it helps presenters be more persuasive. Studies have long shown that the more we hear something, the more likely we are to believe it. This is why some people believe that Vitamin C helps stave off a cold or that you should drink eight glasses of water per day to maintain good health. Both of these statements lack any scientific basis. We've just heard them so often that many have come to believe them. Think about the assertions we are already hearing over and over in this election season. Hillary Clinton hid something in her email. Donald Trump declared bankruptcy four times. Carly Fiorina was a bad CEO. Planned Parenthood sells aborted baby parts. I don't know how much truth there is in any of these statements, but I do know that the more I hear them, the more I tend to believe them. That’s the power of repetition. Psychologists call this the illusory truth effect, and it's why we counsel our clients to use repetition throughout a case. When people don't know anything about a particular topic, the illusory truth effect tells us that the more they hear an assertion, the more they will believe it.
by Kenneth J. Lopez, J.D. Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Lawyers love words. Lawyers love words on slides - tons of words on slides. Some lawyers think that the more words they use on a PowerPoint litigation graphic, the better. They are wrong. Actually, using too many words on a slide will dramatically damage your effectiveness. This damage is not aesthetic in nature. This is not about your look and feel. It is scientifically proven damage that affects how well you inform and persuade your audience. Indeed, it can be said the higher your slide's word count, the lower your persuasiveness.
by Ryan H. Flax (Former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting & General Counsel A2L Consulting In our last post in this series, we explained why storytelling is the key to gaining and keeping the attention of any decision maker and thus the key to winning before trial. How does one develop an effective story? Here are the rules of thumb. First, the simpler the story, the better, and the simpler the language, the better. Use metaphors involving sensory descriptions. Reduce the facts to a relatable story, and use “word pictures.” The complete package of storytelling is not just an oral telling of a story; it also involves necessary visual persuasion. Studies show that at least 60 percent of people learn primarily by seeing. They are visual learners.
by Alex Brown Director, Operations A2L Consulting I hate selling. How many times do we hear this in our daily lives? Many of us have chosen our careers at least in part to avoid having to sell. I bet that many law students thought they’d never again need to be in a position to sell something. Then they became litigators. Whether you believe it or not, as a litigator your whole essence is to sell. But no: You believe that selling is manipulative, annoying, and even boring. Think of Steve Jobs. Whenever Jobs stood up at an internal meeting, interview, or software release event, he was passionate and had a story to tell. He believed that to be truly successful, you must be able to sell. Selling – one might simply call it persuasion -- is not just for salespeople and their prospects. Heck, he started the idea of selling while not selling as seen in his innovative ad from 1997, “The Crazy Ones.” Here is the rare unaired version read by him.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting If the creation of litigation graphics were as simple as some people make it out to be, you would never need a litigation graphics consultant. Yet litigation graphics consultants of varying skill levels are everywhere these days. Clearly, there is a need for them. But why? What value do litigation graphics consultants add? It’s a fair question, and here are 12 good answers. 1. Contrary to what some think, litigation graphics are more than electronic versions of printed documents: Many litigators make the mistake of thinking they are fully utilizing litigation graphics when they hire a trial technician who does nothing more than show documents on screen. See Why Trial Tech ≠ Litigation Graphics 2. Real litigation graphics consultants are storytelling experts, not PowerPoint experts: The technology isn’t what matters. As with lawyers, there are wildly differing levels of talent and education among litigation graphics consultants. The very best, like those on the A2L team, are true experts in helping to craft a story using visuals. These experts add value, not just slides. See Patent Litigation Graphics + Storytelling Proven Effective: The Apple v. Samsung Jury Speaks and $300 Million of Litigation Consulting and Storytelling Validation
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO Persuadius I love great design. While it is becoming somewhat more common than it used to be, it’s still rare – and it’s even rarer in the courtroom. To be clear, my definition of great design includes everything from an interface like what one sees in a Tesla to the adaptive reuse of a historic structure to a well-crafted litigation graphic that tells a story clearly and without the need for further explanation. One place we don't expect to see great design is in parking signs, when we are parking the car and trying to figure out where to park and where not to park. I live in Washington, D.C., where they have some signage that would seem to violate every principle of great design. This one pictured here is a classic, and you probably have some just like it in your town. Does that look familiar? Well, one pilot program in Los Angeles is trying to change all that and make parking signs inspiring from a design perspective. Each sign contains a simple chart that is immediately clear to almost anyone. Green and red overlaid with symbols helps provide a clear message. Here’s an example below.
I spotted an interesting blog post over the weekend that criticized a New York Times article about the Israeli-Arab conflict for using charts and data in a misleading way. I've written about cheating with charts before in several articles, but my 2012 article, 5 Demonstrative Evidence Tricks and Cheats to Watch Out For, in particular, offers some good lessons and has been read by thousands of people. Although it is taken from a very different context than courtroom litigation, the blog post about the Middle East and the Times contains good lessons for both offense and defense when it comes to creating or refuting litigation graphics. The authors levy five key complaints against the New York Times article and its use of graphics to support a narrative.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting I love a good trial timeline whether it's a printed large-format trial board or whether it's in PowerPoint form. This goes for my colleagues here at A2L, as well. In fact, we love timelines so much that we've even produced a book with more than 30 types of trial timelines illustrated. Timelines are used as demonstrative evidence in just about every trial. They serve an obvious purpose of orienting judge and/or jury to the order of events and how those events relate to one another. It's the one exhibit that helps make sense of it all, particularly in a complex case. As our trial timine book discusses, a timeline does not have to be limited to simple chronologies. In fact by incorporating graphs, photos, color schemes and more, a timeline can transmute from being simply informative to being quite persuasive.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Unfortunately, I have the memory of an elephant when it comes to life's uncomfortable moments. One of those occurred during undergraduate school at the University of Mary Washington almost 30 years ago. Like it was yesterday, I remember reviewing my professor's notes on a graded paper. Burned in my memory is the red-pen-circled-notation, "cliché." At the time I really didn't understand why using a cliché would be a problem. After all, it's just a linguistic shortcut, and having my professor deduct points for it struck me as splitting hairs. At the end of the day, a cliché is really just a culturally entrenched phrase that shortcuts language and allows us to speak more efficiently, right? Well, not exactly. Clichés are really the place where good metaphors go to die. That is, what was once a useful language shortcut becomes so overused that it is negatively labeled a cliché. So, what's all the hubbub about when it comes to using clichés in litigation for persuasion? It turns out that by taking the easy way out and using a cliché, you will significantly harm your courtroom persuasion efforts.
by Ryan H. Flax (Former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting I am not advocating that you spend more to develop top-notch demonstrative evidence. What I want you to do is make sure that the litigation graphics that you do use look like you paid a million bucks for them. Make sure you’re getting what you’re paying for. Let me explain why. Recently published and widely reported research out of the University of Cincinnati relating to treating Parkinson’s disease shows that the placebo effect is a real thing and a powerful psychological phenomenon. Interestingly, what the study also shows is that it matters greatly to those experiencing a strong placebo effect how much they believed the pseudo-pharmaceutical cost. Amazingly, seemingly-more-expensive drugs turned out to be much better “drugs” in effect (even though they were not drugs at all). The more a patient believed a drug cost (here the artificial difference was $100 vs $1,500 per dose), the more effective it was at treating their symptoms of Parkinson’s. Perception of cost was capable of influencing physical and psychological behavior and responses on a subconscious level. Wow.
by Ryan H. Flax (Former) Managing Director of Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting
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