An upgrade to Windows 10 worked well. Trial Director and Sanction work fine, and the improvements to the Windows interface are appreciated.

77,000 photos!!! I admit to being shocked when the key expert on a recent construction defect case told us that over the last couple of years he and his staff had taken over 77,000 electronic [...]

Many attorneys rely on Google Earth as the primary source for finding visual information for specific locations, all over the world, involved in litigation (see my prior post discussing how to [...]

People often ask why I stopped litigating cases and created a litigation graphics firm specializing in visual communication for attorneys in mediation and trial. The answer is simple: the work is [...]

When you hear the word “drone,” it’s hard not to think about the unmanned attack drones flown from airbases and used to hunt down suspected terrorists. The term conjures up [...]

With the introduction of larger screens for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus, attorneys now have another powerful tool in the world of presentation equipment. Whether planning a presentation for [...]

Free webinar on PowerPoint Skills for Litigators: Animation, Video & Hyperlinks on Thursday, December 11, 2023 at noon Pacific. Join me in this free webinar and learn how to: Embed a [...]

Vector graphics allow you to expand and zoom in on details without pixelation and loss of clarity. This post has a video demonstration of a new free iPhone app, Adobe Shape, which makes it very [...]

This post discusses how to avoid the problem of ugly pixelated blow-ups and projections by having images redrawn with vector graphics. Vector graphics like those used in Adobe Illustrator will [...]

  Free Recording Available: PowerPoint Skills for the Litigator: Templates, Timelines and Tools Our webinar on PowerPoint Skills for Litigators last week had great attendance and [...]

At Cogent Legal, we often help litigators with PowerPoint, and now we plan to share some of our PowerPoint secrets for litigators in a free webinar. The webinar will be held on Wednesday, October [...]

At Cogent Legal, we often help litigators with PowerPoint, and now we plan to share some of our PowerPoint secrets for litigators in a free webinar. The webinar will be held on Wednesday, October [...]

Well-presented photographs are powerful tools for litigators. In this post, I'll share some samples that show how we've helped litigators use photographs in court, along with a number of tips for [...]

Numbers, and the interpretation of numbers, play a big role in litigation. Presenting numerical data in court often requires a good graph of the numbers to show changes and trends in the numbers. [...]

We all know the power of a well-done animation in front of a jury. Such animations can help visually explain concepts in moments instead of in hours. However, they can also be instrumental in [...]

Many attorneys make limited use of technology. As a paralegal friend recently lamented to me, "the most advanced organizational technology many attorneys use is a binder.” With remote screen [...]

This post provides an annotated "e-brief" style hyperlinked copy of annotations on the Supreme Court decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. In the decision, the Court held that the claims were not [...]

I recommend Dragon voice recognition software for attorneys because it is so useful and so inexpensive ($101.03 today on Amazon for Premium version 12 for Windows). This blog post how I use [...]

To master the presentation of numbers, attorneys should learn some basic skills in Microsoft Excel, the computer program most often used in business for calculations. Numerical evidence in [...]

Arbitrations are a great forum for the use of the graphics, animations and trial technologies. Depending on the arbitrator(s)' familiarity with technologies, attorneys can often submit briefs, [...]

The key to success in data-heavy litigation is developing a method to show the data in a way that effectively tells your story, ideally in a format that is interactive so the attorney can pick [...]

Trials are never, ever easy. They rarely go as planned, and they require the most amazing dexterity of knowing when to hold tight to your positions, and when to completely drop Plan A and go [...]

Tips for managing electronic data in litigation effectively, including capturing fields from email or other electronic source, and using those fields in privilege logs.

When you copy text from a scanned Acrobat PDF, it often comes with hard returns. This post shows how to remove the hard returns using Microsoft Word.

Going to trial requires planning and attention to detail. Jurors may not see the details of your plan, but they will appreciate attorneys who move quickly in trial and show respect for the [...]

A GIF illustrating the story of an email as it goes through litigation.

A "biomechanical animation" is a powerful visual format to develop and display in conjunction with a biomechanical expert, even in an admitted liability case. Such animations are relevant when [...]

Cogent Legal offers webinars and live presentations about graphics and technology for litigation. This post announces webinars about case management databases and iPads for trial presentation.

A central case database where litigators track issues, witnesses, events, documents, to-do items and more is a vital tool for making e-discovery and litigation more efficient. While [...]

After spending time, effort and money to produce an animation that will support a key point of your case (or disprove a key point of your opponents’ case), you want to make sure the jury [...]

Being able to make a presentation wirelessly is handy for use in court, in meeting rooms—really, anytime you want to use your iPad to present to an audience. Wireless presentation is better than [...]

Litigation would be much easier if you could work on just one case at a time, and if each case moved quickly to a conclusion. Unfortunately, litigators don't have that luxury. Litigators need to [...]

Trial courts have discretion to award costs for trial technology under the decision in Bender v. County of Los Angeles, Cal. App. 2d Dist. (July 9, 2023). The court held: "Almost 20 years have [...]

Yesterday for Christmas, I opened a box that contained my very own Google Glass, and I know I’ll spend a good chunk of time during this vacation week teaching myself how to use the device. [...]

In case you’re looking for a few last-minute holiday gifts for people in your office—or if you just want to try some new gadgets for yourself—the TechnoLawyer NewsWire has come out with its [...]

I discovered a new app that has some exciting possibilities for use in trial or mediation, allowing attorneys to launch and deliver their presentations in a more professional manner. Most of us [...]

“Luddite Lawyers Are Ethical Violations Waiting to Happen.” That’s the alarming headline on a great post earlier this week in Lawyerist.com by attorney Megan Zavieh, who [...]

Professor Edward Tufte, the guru of information graphic design, advises his students to study the design of popular websites to learn techniques for conveying information quickly and efficiently. [...]

On this day before Thanksgiving, I just couldn’t come up with a lot to say about informational graphics or litigation. I thought it best simply to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and to [...]

This post provides an annotated version of the Apple v. Samsung iPhone patent decision. These annotations are like those we use in an e-brief / ebrief. The post provides a video showing how to do [...]

In closing argument, it can be effective to show the jury the verdict form and tell them how you hope they fill it out. This technique is particularly important when the jury will face a [...]

A few weeks ago, I published a post based on my presentation at the Melvin Belli Seminar on Tort Practice, which focused on a three-step process for attorneys to develop graphics from the very [...]

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you have an interest in legal tech and litigation graphics. You likely know they’re important for any 21st-century case presentation. But you [...]

In oral argument, a litigator has very limited time—she needs to hit the high points and move on. She must communicate enough information to convince the judge or jury of her argument, yet must [...]

We recommend to our readers a recent New Yorker article by Gareth Cook entitled Why Abraham Lincoln Loved Infographics. Cook’s New Yorker article discusses Lincoln’s “slave [...]

We all know by now that we live in a world in which information is delivered visually, and that people learn best when they have visual aids. Attorneys who head to court with demonstratives to [...]

Great graphics make difficult concepts understandable, and such graphics are what we aspire to each day at Cogent Legal. Today’s blog entry will dissect a graphic from the New York Times [...]

This article won the LitigationWorld Pick of the Week award. The editors of LitigationWorld, a free weekly email newsletter for litigators and others who work in litigation, give this award to [...]

A week ago, I was invited to Portland, Oregon, to present at the Federal District of Oregon Conference on “Innovations in Law: Science and Technology.” The conference explored the [...]

On Tuesday, October 1, 2023 at noon Pacific Time, I will present a webinar for SFTLA entitled “Sipping From the Fire Hose: Techniques for Managing E-Discovery and Evidence in [...]