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 court or mediation, it’s worth trying to use your iPhone while presenting. Having your phone in the palm of your hand, and using it […]
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 YouTube video in PowerPoint;
Download a YouTube video and edit it in PowerPoint;
Insert hyperlink buttons in your PowerPoint to jump instantly to the slide you need;
Animate a series of screen shots (or other objects) to explain a concept step by step;
Put control buttons in the footer of slides to jump to a menu.
This blog post uses video of a mock deposition and motion argument to review lessons including start thinking about your visual trial presentation before you take depositions; think of visual analogies to explain complex concepts; and give yourself time to edit visuals, just as you give yourself time to edit your briefing.
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 8, 2023 at noon Pacific.
The Recorder has recognized Cogent Legal as “Best Courtroom Presentation Provider” in its 2014 Annual Survey. This is the second year in a row that Cogent received the honor.
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 another course mid-trial as evidence comes in. The best trial attorneys do all the above on a regular basis, and the key is to always have backup plans and be able to think on your feet no matter what happens so you can keep going and not give up.
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 passed since Science Applications was decided, during which time the use of technology in the courtroom has become commonplace (including a technician to monitor the equipment and quickly resolve any glitches), and technology costs have dramatically declined. . . The costs at issue total just over $24,000, and the trial court specifically found the trial technology enhanced counsel’s advocacy and was reasonably necessary to the conduct of the litigation. The court acted well within its discretion in allowing recovery of these costs." Bender (p. 991.)
Legal visuals work. We thought so, and now we have the statistical rigor of a controlled experiment to prove it. In a study comparing opening arguments delivered with and without simple PowerPoint visuals, mock jurors were persuaded more often when the slides were used. The study found effects on persuading jurors, recollection of evidence and […]
“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 specializes in defending attorneys under investigation by the California State Bar. She talks about how lawyers’ relationship to technology—and their obligation to understand it—have fundamentally changed in two decades. […]
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 avoid getting mired in details that will only confuse. Good litigation graphics can counter this time crunch by allowing an attorney to communicate clearly and quickly. […]
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 one article every week that they feel is a must-read for this audience. “Good on her feet”—you’ll often hear that phrase used to describe skilled trial […]
Good litigation graphics convey a message quickly and clearly. The example animation in today’s post supports an argument that plaintiff’s claim for a “reasonable royalty” in a patent case was unreasonable because the claim equaled the full value of the defendant company at the time of the “hypothetical negotiation” back in 2008. Here is a short (18-second) version of the animation with audio of […]
As lawyers, we are always arguing about documents, and we often need to display those documents in court. In patent cases, displaying documents is particularly important because the patent’s language describes the invention. In today’s post, I’ll talk about how to display this language in an understandable, readable and trustworthy form for the judge or jury.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about PowerPoint recently, and not in a good way. At Cogent Legal, we have been working hard on a number of cases that involve extensive use of PowerPoint for the client, and I often feel that getting PowerPoint to do anything involving multimedia is like trying to make a […]
When the iPad first came out and attorneys began using it as a tool to help present their cases visually, I thought how great it would be if a presentation could be seen by all participants on their own tablet as opposed to projected on a screen. This personal contact with the tablet in their […]
In my continuing effort to point out effective presentations that attorneys can learn lessons from for case presentations, I came across one that teaches on two different fronts. I saw a Slideshare presentation by Matt Homann, the founder of LexThink, which is a firm dedicated to helping attorneys collaborate and work better. Matt is a self-described “recovering […]
The Association of Business Trial Lawyers asked Cogent Legal to prepare the graphics for a presentation last night on mock trials. The panel consisted of some of the best jury consultants in the country exploring the factors that make successful and worthwhile mock trials. Beth Bonora, Karen Jo Koonan, Andy Sheldon and Ron Beaton all touched on some […]
One of the most common items attorneys will put into a brief or a case presentation is an overhead map of the relevant area. Since the dawn of Google, attorneys have grown accustomed to copying and pasting the image of a Google map into a document or a PowerPoint presentation. I, too, am a big […]
This post is written by Michael Kelleher, Esq. Before I recently joined as a litigation consultant here at Cogent Legal, “Words” was my nickname at a previous job. Ironic, isn’t it, that “Words” is now working at a legal graphics provider? I earned the nickname because I often dealt with long and complicated patents and […]
I definitely have a love/hate relationship with the dominant program out there for creating and showing presentations: PowerPoint. I love PowerPoint because it’s generally easy for anyone to create something for a presentation, and with a little bit of work, create something quite useful. It also is so prevalent in the U.S. that pretty much […]
[UPDATE: We uploaded the webinar on SlideShare and embedded it below so you can watch the whole thing if you like.] Yesterday, I co-presented a CLE webinar on “Technology for Better Mediation” along with two San Francisco trial attorneys, Miles Cooper of Rouda Feder Tietjen & McGuinn, and Jeff Smith of Abramson Smith Waldsmith. One […]
I just finished reading Walter Isaacson’s remarkable biography of Steve Jobs, which I highly recommend. It’s a great read, and it inspired me to develop this post on how to use Keynote for Macs. Keynote is a program that Steve Jobs demanded his team create for his product unveilings because he was so frustrated with […]
I read with great interest the post by Tom Wallerstein From Biglaw to Boutique: The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Fall regarding the “David and Goliath” match-ups of big and small firms. Having myself been a partner at a small five-attorney plaintiff firm for years, I certainly know the feeling of going against the […]
This post is written by Dave Nugent, Cogent Legal’s Senior Producer. Remember those childhood days of grade school innocence and the excitement generated when it was “Show & Tell” day? Presenters would stand before you, hold something up and then speak to it. That object was iconic. It immediately conveyed value, meaning and context to […]
As much as my ego hopes that Cogent Legal Blog is read by attorneys far and wide who eagerly await each update, I’m well aware that busy attorneys have limited time to read blogs and that thousands of law-related blogs vie for your attention. For all of you who might have missed my most practical […]
When I graduated from law school in 1993, job searching via social media consisted of using the Yellow Pages to find a law firm to cold call. Wannabe associates like me attended job fairs and perhaps asked a parent’s friend to write a letter of recommendation. In that pre-Internet day of dial-up modems, none of […]
Last week, the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) put on a full one-day mock trial in San Francisco in front of a large gathering of attorneys to show how the masters of trial do their trade. The mock trial turned out to be a fascinating study in contrasts between the plaintiff and defense in […]
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 […]
The benefit of the ongoing digital revolution in litigation is that so much more is possible than ever before for the creation and presentation of graphics for cases. But for every step forward with better technology and more precise apps, it seems as though these tech tools become more complicated and technical. I’ve discovered many […]
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 […]
Judges really do get to see it all when it comes to the good, the bad and the just plain ugly of attorneys trying cases. Yesterday, I attended The Recorder Roundtable: “From the Bench - Outstanding Trial Work” in San Francisco, where sitting judges offered great tips for all level of practitioners about what judges […]
My last post on how to avoid “Death by PowerPoint” covered three main points to help attorneys make compelling visual presentations. Now I’ll follow up with three more. Remember, “Death by PowerPoint” is shorthand for any confusing, complicated or downright dull graphics that kill rather than spark the audience’s attention. Often they happen on PowerPoint […]
