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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
As former trial attorneys here at Cogent Legal, we know the value of good trial graphics. Our clients appreciate and understand the need for high-quality in-court presentation too. Recently, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
[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 [...]
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? [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Attorneys sometimes act in trial or mediation as if they’re little more than an evidence machine collecting all the right evidence, excluding all the improper evidence, applying the law and [...]
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 [...]
The Expedited Jury Trial Act (Act; Code of Civil Procedure §§ 630.01 – 630.10, AB 2284), which went into effect in California on January 1, allows cases to be tried in a single day. It’s [...]
