This week, Regina Hopper takes the reins as A2L's Managing Director of Litigation Consulting. In her new role, Regina will be responsible for directing the efforts of A2L's 20+ litigation consultants, litigation graphic artists, and trial technicians nationwide. For A2L clients, who are most often trial attorneys from large law firms representing large companies, her experience brings added depth to A2L's already robust 23-year-old litigation consulting and litigation communications practices. Regina comes to A2L with an extremely broad background in litigation, trade association work, public policy, and the media. She joined A2L in 2017 and she also serves as senior vice president for global public policy of GRIDSMART, a company that develops smart, cost-effective technologies to improve the safety and efficiency of the nation’s transportation system. Before joining GRIDSMART, Regina was president and CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, the nation’s largest organization dedicated to advancing the research, development, and deployment of intelligent transportation systems to improve the nation’s surface transportation system. The group has taken the lead in introducing Congress, the media, and the nation to the concept of driverless cars. She also served for four years as president and CEO of America’s Natural Gas Alliance, a trade group that advocates for the development and utilization of natural gas resources. While there, Regina first encountered A2L who she engaged to support ANGA's advocacy and persuasive communication efforts. Regina also served as executive vice president of US Telecom and of the American Trucking Associations. Prior to that she was senior vice president of litigation communications at Weber McGinn, a leading public relations firm. Regina was a D.C.-based correspondent for CBS News, where she won an Emmy award for her work on the “48 Hours” show. In her various trade association positions, Regina developed an expertise in assisting industry leaders communicate legal and public policy initiatives to the public and federal, state and local policymakers. Regina is a graduate of the University of Arkansas School of Law licensed in Arkansas. In 2012, CEO Update selected Hopper as one of the nation's top association CEOs. In that same year, The Hill named her to its annual list of top lobbyists. “What pulls my whole career together is my interest in storytelling and my ability to tell a story,” Regina says. “Whether someone is doing advocacy for a trade association, testifying as an expert witness, or reporting a story as a White House correspondent, it’s always a matter of working with a team to tell a story. It all has to be concise, understandable, well-written and logical.” Regina succeeds Tony Klapper who is now Assistant General Counsel for Products, Regulatory, and Litigation at Volkswagen. Tony succeeded Ryan Flax who is now an Administrative Patent Judge at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Regina Hopper can be reached at 703.548.1799 or hopper@A2LC.com. Additional articles and resources available from A2L related to litigation consulting, litigation communications, litigation graphics, litigation storytelling, and litigation technology include: Top trial lawyers talk about working with A2L Top trial lawyers explain why storytelling is so critical for persuasion 10 Things Litigation Consultants Do That WOW Litigators Free E-Book: What is the Value of a Litigation Consultant? 21 Reasons a Litigator Is Your Best Litigation Graphics Consultant 3 Types of Litigation Graphics Consultants Free Webinar: Storytelling as a Persuasion Tool Free E-Book: Storytelling for Litigators Your Coach Is Not Better Than You – in the Courtroom or Elsewhere 10 Types of Value Added by Litigation Graphics Consultants Explaining the Value of Litigation Consulting to In-House Counsel 17 Reasons Why Litigation Consultants Are Better at Graphics Than Law Firms $300 Million of Litigation Consulting and Storytelling Validation Top 7 Things I've Observed as a Litigation Consultant 9 Reasons Litigation Consultant is the Best Job Title in Litigation
Any time it is feasible, I prefer to price our work using alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) of some sort. They give our customers, which are generally major law firms, predictability and a sense of control. In addition, they provide predictability and control to the ultimate client that is paying the bills, which is typically a large corporation. For A2L, alternative fee arrangements, such as fixed fees, fee structures with a floor or a ceiling, or bonuses for winning a case, offer enormous benefits as well. We achieve the same financial predictability that our clients seek, and AFAs allow us to create closer relationships with our clients. And for firms like ours, our clients, and their clients (the major corporations), alternative fee arrangements do something much more important than creating financial controls. They return the focus to winning.
Quite frequently, defendants in major cases will decide to form joint defense groups. Joint defense groups are intended to provide defendants with significant efficiencies that result from common effort in facing a common adversary, whether in a patent case against the same patent holder, tort litigation against the same set of injured people, white-collar criminal actions against the government, antitrust litigation against the same plaintiff, and so on. But joint defense groups, which by their nature bring together several high-powered lawyers at a single defense table in the courtroom, can present unique challenges. Sometimes, joint defense groups will work as planned and the defendants will reap the benefits of their cooperation, and sometimes they will break down. Here are some best practices for joint defense groups to follow at trial that will help them succeed rather than fall apart in the heat of trial. Clear Leadership. The group should pick a clear leader. Studies of organizational behavior and dynamics show that for “pop-up businesses” with limited durations and specific tasks to accomplish, like movie production crews or trial teams, success is associated with the early selection of a team leader. Many trial teams may be afraid to antagonize a lead attorney for one of the parties who is not chosen and may thus hesitate to make a choice, but it is best to pick a leader and move forward that way. Just Enough Consultants. The group should pick one consulting firm for each trial-related task – for example, one consultant to handle all graphics and litigation consulting. The “too many cooks” phenomenon is definitely present if the group decides to select multiple vendors for key consulting roles in the trial. The attorneys should be focusing on their case, not on resolving disputes between vendors.
During the past three decades, I've heard many clichés about the legal industry. One of them is that companies hire the lawyer and not the law firm. I think this one is often still true, but, for the first time in my career, I am noticing that this cliché is no longer as applicable as it used to be. This change is happening both at law firms and at litigation consulting firms like ours. It's true there are some special lawyers out there, particularly trial lawyers. Many of them can be recognized by their first names only, like Beth, David, and Brendan. To be sure, these trial lawyers are extraordinary. They are the go-to lawyers for in-house counsel when the stakes are highest – among other things, because they win cases reliably, even when the facts are not on their side.
Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting This is the fifth consecutive year that I've written a new year economic outlook article focused on litigation. Please review some of my previous articles that were focused on 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013. While I believe that 2017 will be a very good year for litigation, it will not be good for everyone. From where I sit, things look and sound remarkably different during this current economic expansion than they did in previous years. A2L's litigation consulting business, one focused almost entirely on trials, is thriving. We've grown more than 50% in each of the past two years, and I'm forecasting similar or better growth for 2017. Our growth is spread across many law firms/corporations and many areas of the law, so I know it's meaningful growth. Yet any conversation with my large law firm managing partner friends or my big company in-house counsel friends suggests that litigation should be having an off year. These well-informed sources, as well as courthouse data, tell me that case filings are down and that litigation at big law firms is down. So, how can our trial-driven firm be prospering and big litigation departments be faltering? One of us has to be looking at the litigation industry all wrong, right? Actually, I believe that we're both right, and I'm trying on some new vocabulary to explain it.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Tony Klapper joined the A2L team after a vibrant and successful career as a litigator at law firms like Kirkland & Ellis and Reed Smith. One of the reasons that he has meshed so well with the culture here at A2L is his penchant for storytelling, particularly as it applies to persuading in the courtroom. In the past year, I've had the pleasure of watching Tony deliver private storytelling training sessions to litigators at many of the very top litigation law firms. And I have also had the distinct pleasure of watching him work with our customers, who are primarily large law firms engaged in litigation with hundreds of millions, or billions, of dollars at stake. Having been in this business and having seen a lot of people do this kind of work for three decades, I can say with confidence that Tony is absolutely superb at combining the development of a high-quality narrative with high-quality persuasive visuals. So it's with great pleasure that I announce an upcoming free public webinar on storytelling for litigators on Wednesday, January 11, 2017 at 1:30 pm (EST) - NOTE: Recorded version will be available after the event if you register. Everyone is invited to attend. All you have to do is sign up, and that takes about 30 seconds. Here's the link to register.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting I don't want this post to be purely self-congratulatory, but I do have some good news to share. I think it's relevant and useful news for litigators and litigation professionals. A2L was just voted number one in the legal industry again. This time, it's in the category of trial consultants, in a poll conducted by the prestigious Legal Times newspaper. This accolade comes on the heels of being voted the number one jury consultant and number one litigation graphics provider in a variety of other national polls. Here's why I think this information is helpful for our readers. Twenty years after founding A2L, when I look at our industry I see three or four firms capable of delivering truly top-class results in high-profile litigation. However, the view from the law firms seems entirely different. If you Google any of our services like jury consulting, litigation graphics, or trial technician providers, we may very well come up first in many of these searches (for good reason), but there will be dozens if not hundreds of other providers listed for these services. How is one expected to sort the wheat from the chaff? You can't tell from a Google search because it's obviously not a reliable indicator of who is a top services provider. You can't always tell from your colleagues either. Have they had have many excellent experiences with a provider, or just a one off -- or do they have a longstanding relationship with a provider without a reliable track record? Well, it's exactly surveys like this one in Legal Times that provide an objective source from thousands of lawyers surveyed. And I'm proud to say that over the last five years, A2L has been consistently highly ranked in just about everywhere we've been nominated. So if you're in the market for a litigation consulting firm like ours or if you're in the market for another service like discovery, court reporting, or even law firm and litigation financing, a guide like this one is a good source of information. These guides prepared by objective organizations like Legal Times provide a directory of high-quality providers and can save a stressed litigator or litigation paralegal considerable time identifying the very best jury consultants, the very best litigation graphics providers, the very best trial technicians, the very best trial consultants or any one of dozens of categories relevant to litigation. Click here to download your copy of this 2016 guidebook. I hope it's helpful to you.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting As we approach the end of 2016, I'm reviewing the many free resources that have been viewed and downloaded from A2L Consulting's extensive litigation-focused website this year. From podcasts to blog articles to free downloadable e-books to free webinars, we have given back this year to the trial community more than ever. Our blog has been accessed 250,000 times, our 20+ free e-books have been downloaded tens of thousands of times and more than 1,000 new subscribers have signed up for a free litigation and persuasion-focused blog subscription in the past year. To help sort through all that data and information and focus on just the best content and resources, here are the 10 items, all completely complimentary and without additional obligation, that saw the most intense attention this year from the litigation industry's top players. Visits to A2L's free resources (podcasts, e-books, webinars etc.): This central set of resources allows visitors to our site to direct themselves to the information they most need. Storytelling for Litigators Webinar: The science of using storytelling for persuasion is in its nascent stages. This webinar explains what is now known and how to best use storytelling techniques to influence other people’s thoughts and conclusions. The Patent Litigation Handbook 4th Edition: During A2L's more than 20 years in business, intellectual property cases have represented nearly half of our total work. Therefore, it’s no surprise that when we want to update one of our handbooks, we often turn to our patent litigation handbook. It’s a perennial winner. The Voir Dire Handbook: I'm surprised by how popular this book is, but voir dire continues to be one of the most searched for terms on our site. We routinely help support trial teams during jury selection and conduct mock exercises that have a voir dire component. Complex Civil Litigation Handbook: This book is a necessity for anyone who enters civil courtrooms, develops theories for civil cases, or works on complex civil litigation.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting In the first quarter of 2016, A2L Consulting reported record amounts of business and web traffic. Well, those numbers have only continued to climb throughout the second and third quarters of this year. High stakes litigation is booming across the industry, although it's not heavily concentrated in any one law firm or in any one business sector. Every year, more than a quarter million visits are paid to A2L's blog, The Litigation Consulting Report. Each year we publish more than 100 articles focused on highly specialized areas of persuasion science, jury consulting, high-stakes litigation, and the use of litigation graphics at trial. To help our readership find the very best articles, we publish "best of" articles like this one throughout the year. Today, I'm highlighting the five articles that you, our readers, voted the very best of the past two quarters. I think each is a fascinating read. 5. 10 Criteria that Define Great Trial Teams: Our top trial experts at A2L seek to distill the essence of trial preparation and develop a numerical way to measure its quality and predict success. 4. 50 Characteristics of Top Trial Teams: We tell our readers what the unique characteristics of the top trial teams are. Some of them are quite surprising.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Today, we are publishing our latest free book -- A Trial Lawyer's Guide to Jury Consulting and Mock Trials. This free 328-page book is based on the idea that even after some decades in which jury consulting has grown and established itself as a business, many lawyers still don’t necessarily understand what jury consultants do and how valuable they can be. Many lawyers probably still harbor the old idea that a jury consultant is just someone who sits next to a lawyer and uses a “gut feeling” based on a potential juror’s occupation, body language or appearance to ask the lawyer to exclude the juror or keep the juror. If that stereotype were ever true, it’s certainly not true today. We’re about as far now from the O.J. Simpson days 20 years ago as we are from the Perry Mason days. This book is dedicated to bridging whatever conceptual gap may remain between trial lawyers and jury consultants. It pulls together many of the lessons that jury consultants have learned, so that any lawyer who reads the book can get up to speed quickly and save herself a good deal of money and time. We have been dismayed at times at the disconnection between long-held myths held even by seasoned litigators and what the data show. Excellent trial strategies are the product of balancing art and science, data and wisdom, confidence and humility. Among the topics in this book are: 14 Places Your Colleagues Are Using Persuasive Graphics That Maybe You’re Not, Is Hiring a Jury Consultant Really Worth It?, Why Do I Need a Mock Trial If There Is No Real Voir Dire, 21 Ingenious Ways to Research Your Judge, 7 Videos About Body Language Our Litigation Consultants Recommend, 15 Things Everyone Should Know About Jury Selection and 6 Good Reasons to Conduct a Mock Trial. A good lawyer knows the law. A great lawyer knows the jury and how it works. Read this book and reflect on its contents to know more than most trial lawyers do. This book is based on hundreds of trials and years of data, not mere theory or presumption. We hope you enjoy it and share it. Please send us your feedback and let us know if you have any questions or comments, any time. If you have any questions about a case, a witness, a jury pool, a venue, strategic options or dilemmas, or think your case is unwinnable, we’re only a phone call/email away and would love to hear from you.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting As trials become more and more complex – just think of the intellectual property cases worth billions of dollars that have rooted the attention of Silicon Valley and the world – litigation consulting has become more and more important. There may be fewer jury trials now than there used to be, but many of the cases that go to trial can shake up an industry. “Litigation consulting” is a broad term that describes a broad variety of services that help lawyers try and win cases. They include jury and bench trial consulting, litigation graphics consulting, on-site courtroom technology support and similar services. In a given case, a trial team may need all the services that A2L provides, or just a subset of those services. In order to show how far the litigation consulting industry has come in a relatively short time, we are issuing a free --- page book, The Value of Litigation Consulting. The book explains why even the best trial lawyers can benefit from the services of top-notch litigation consultants. It’s a handbook that shows where the industry has been and where it’s heading. The book is full of useful, hard-hitting articles on these topics, including 11 Things Your Colleagues Pay Litigation Consultants to Do, 6 Secrets of the Jury Consulting Business You Should Know, 12 Reasons Litigation Graphics Are More Complicated Than You Think, How Long Before Trial Should I Begin Preparing My Trial Graphics?, 11 Traits of Great Courtroom Trial Technicians. You can download the book here - completely free - no strings attached.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting Anyone who puts together a team to represent a client in a high-stakes piece of litigation is engaging in an act of leadership. To be successful, such a litigation team needs to blend the skills of an outside set of trial lawyers from a law firm, large or small; in-house corporate counsel; the leadership of the client company, which will want to keep close tabs on high-stakes litigation; a wide variety of paralegals, assistants and other key nonlawyer personnel; and, in all probability, a trial consulting company such as A2L. Today we are releasing the fourth edition of a new and free eBook on leadership for lawyers that can be downloaded here. I hope that it will be useful to legal industry leaders, whether running a trial team, a practice group, or an entire law firm.
by Ken Lopez Founder/CEO A2L Consulting After the more than 20 years that we have spent in the litigation consulting business, we don't hear very many questions that we’ve never heard before. However, this week I did hear one, and the story is worth sharing because it goes to the heart of how a truly great litigator performs. The question I heard was, “What can we do better as a trial team on the next engagement?” Consider how remarkable this is. Here was a litigator from a large law firm sincerely trying to improve the performance of his team and himself. I was deeply impressed, as this was the first time I've had someone ask that question after an engagement. It's a very sensible question, of course. A2L's team has worked with thousands of litigation teams from the very best law firms in the world. I have watched many litigators perform near-magic in the courtroom, and I have seen teams fail miserably. There are patterns that lead to success and patterns that lead to failure. In the spirit of the question that this litigator asked me, I started thinking about the traits of the world’s most effective trial teams. Here are 50 of them culled from my experience and that of my colleagues Dr. Laurie Kuslansky and Tony Klapper. Practice is by far the single most obvious indicator of a trial team's success. The great litigators draft their openings months or years in advance of trial and practice them dozens or hundreds of times. See, Practice, Say Jury Consultants, is Why Movie Lawyers Perform So Well Preparation. Great trial teams start preparing long before trial, and they don't ask the client’s permission to do so. Their attitude is, “If you work with a team like ours, it means you want to win and we know how to win and we're going to get that done, whatever it takes.” I think they are right. There are only a handful of law firms that I have observed that have this sense of preparation embedded in their litigation culture. See, The 13 Biggest Reasons to Avoid Last-Minute Trial Preparation Great litigation teams want their answers questioned. Great litigators are confident. They are so confident that they open themselves up to rigorous scrutiny in their approach to trial. Through a whole host of methods, they invite criticism, suggestions, fresh pairs of eyes, lay people’s opinions, experts’ opinions, and they use all of these voices to perform at their best. See, Accepting Litigation Consulting is the New Hurdle for Litigators They lead, but they can be led too. Great litigators avoid dominating all discussions. They intentionally let others lead them and be seen as leaders. Download the Leadership for Lawyers eBook They just look comfortable in front of a jury. Confidence equals persuasiviness and humans are born with an expert ability to detect it. See, A Harvard Psychologist Writes About Presenting to Win They build narratives early. They know how important a narrative is to winning a case. They have also learned from experience that the earlier this is done, the better. A well-constructed narrative can inform everything from briefing to discovery to witness preparation. Download The Opening Statement Toolkit
by Tony Klapper Managing Director, Litigation Consulting A2L Consulting I was reading the Washington Post’s Business section on Sunday morning, and a front-page article about Sean Parker caught my eye. Parker, dubbed “Silicon Valley’s Bad-Boy Genius,” co-founded Napster and was the first president of Facebook. He was also played by Justin Timberlake in “The Social Network.” Far from a routine business profile, this article provides several fascinating lessons concerning the importance of creative collaboration. Apparently tired of catering to the entertainment needs of millennials, Parker recently launched the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. Although it was notable that Parker invested $250 million to support groundbreaking research into eradicating a disease that kills millions each year, even more important is his model of creating a “sandbox” for scientific research. At press time, six premier medical research institutions—Stanford, Hopkins, MD Anderson, UPenn, UCSF, and UCLA—had signed up to be part of the consortium that Parker is creating to fight cancer. The premise behind the effort is that working together in the sandbox is far more effective than working alone. That truism is not one that is always followed.
Share: