by Ryan H. Flax, Esq.
(Former) Managing Director, Litigation Consulting
A2L Consulting
Next week, I'll be presenting a free webinar called Visual Persuasion Techniques in Patent Litigation. It's free to register, and I would enjoy it if you attended. While my audience will be primarily patent litigators, anyone who presents complex technical information in the courtroom will benefit. Here’s why.
I am a patent litigator by trade. I helped my former law firm, Dickstein Shapiro, win more than $1 billion in jury verdicts in my 13 years there. In that time, I learned a lot of lessons about how best to present complex material to a lay audience. When I joined A2L almost two years ago, I was a bit shocked by how other firms prepared to try cases, as I wrote shortly after I joined in this article.
While my partners and I had always prepared a very long time in advance of trial, many trial teams from top 200 law firms prepare at the last minute. I'm sure it’s for good reason, and it’s probably driven by client budget concerns most of the time, but it was surprising to me. In these past two years I have adapted to both styles and I have seen how they both work.
What is common to trial teams who prepare well in advance and those who prepare at the 11th hour is a desire to simplify the case. Simplification is an odd process that follows a circuitous path. As I noted in a co-authored article with some great litigators from Foley & Lardner, simplification is possibly the most valuable thing a trial attorney can do and yet it may be the very thing least appreciated by the client.
In seeking to simplify a case, litigation graphics are an essential tool. What is surprising is how they prefer to see their graphics delivered. The science of what works in litigation graphics is full of surprises. It is all pretty confusing until someone walks you through the science.
Creating litigation graphics that work is not as simple as cutting and pasting your argument outline into some PowerPoint slides. Rather, it’s a process of figuring out what to say and then figuring out how to show that in the most understandable way possible.
Designers of all types, whether they are architects, interior designers, web designers or litigation artists, often start with reference material when they begin their work. These are often pictures of award-winning designs in their field. In this spirit, I will share some of my favorite litigation graphics used here at A2L recently. There is a lot that can be learned by looking at a few examples.
In the webinar, I will discuss some unusual services I have been a part of developing, including Mock-Markman exercises, The Micro-Mock, the Mock Federal Circuit Hearing, and more. Each of these events, plus others like technology tutorials and trials call for unique preparation.
Register for the complimentary webinar by clicking here.
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