In the 6-3 ABC v. Aereo decision, the Supreme Court made a mess of copyright law and sowed uncertainty for technology companies by trying to plug a loophole. As Justice Scalia put it in his dissent, the Court put in place "an improvised standard (‘looks-like-cable-TV’) that will sow confusion for years to come." This post presents an annotated e-brief style version of the opinion with my notes.
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 and choose which data they want to access and show at any particular time with any particular witness.
At Cogent Legal, making large data sets accessible and understandable is one of the most challenging aspects of what we do, and the most satisfying. In today's post, I'll review a recent case in which we faced this challenge and created an interactive interface for a large set of data about employee locations throughout a day.
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 start of their case to “build the visual foundation” for it. This post is a follow-up that looks at the specific […]
The following post is by Dave Nugent, Cogent Legal’s Senior Producer At Cogent Legal, real estate and land use cases are among our favorite to support. They can offer up rich and tangible imagery to shape for jury scrutiny. We humans seem to be drawn to all things about “land.” Yet most real estate cases […]
At a recent seminar I attended, Judge M. Lynn Duryee of the Marin County Superior Court had a great story of an attorney who stood up in opening statement and said, “I’m going to call an economist who will testify about the damages caused by the negligence of Defendant, but I warn you it’s going […]
(I wrote this post for a blog I follow and respect: The Matte Pad Marketing Know-How for the Legal Profession. It was published there two weeks ago, and I’m reposting it here for Cogent Legal Blog’s audience. Image courtesy of The Matte Pad.) It’s the eleventh hour before trial and you’re feverishly preparing your case […]
In litigation, almost every case will benefit from a timeline that lays out key facts and circumstances in a chronological order. The process of making a timeline can help you, the attorney, organize and strengthen your argument, and the end result is a clear and compelling visual presentation that will help all parties involved better […]
These days, the case that gets tried is the exception, and the case that settles at mediation is the rule. A study by the National Center for State Courts concluded that only about 3 percent of civil cases go to trial, while the other 97 percent are settled or dismissed. This means that mediation is […]
