Courtroom Presentation, Litigation Software : Charles Perez : Trial Presentation Blog

While we're in the "digital mythbusting mode" allow us a moment to tackle digital AUDIO recorders.

Ah, yes, the march of progress. Remember the video rant? Yep, same thing here.

If you're relying on the new state of the art digital audio recorders to record important statements to be possibly used in a trial presentation here are a few tips that will make your life a little easier and your presentation a little smoother:

Unless you’re going at full CD quality, your digital recorder is tossing stuff out to save space. Supposedly your ears will not miss the missing stuff, but our forensic audio equipment sure will. You want your machine to toss out as little as possible, and that means running at the highest "bit rate" you possibly can.

To put it another way, if you are maximizing your recording time, then you are also minimizing your recording quality, and also the amount of help we can be to you. If you need to record for a very long time and have to go to a low bit rate to do it, then it’s time to invest in new equipment with more storage space. As with video, it’s better to get a small amount of useable material than a large amount of junk.

A lot of these portable digital recorders have

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Well, it happened again this week and I just feel it's my duty to educate those overworked, underpaid legal assistants and paralegals who make this call to us with aprehension and slight embarassement in their voice: " Do you have an Elmo we can rent?"

By the tone in their voice I know they have this image of the world famous Sesame Street® character firmly lodged in their mind's eye........ then there's that  moment of silence after they've asked  (which I'll admit I relish!) where I imagine them wincing - waiting for my laughter... that I answer with all the casualness of a fast food hamburger jockey asking if you want to "super size" your order: "Yes, we have an Elmo, do you need a projector and screen with that too?"

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Everybody knows what a PowerPoint presentation is - right? Both of my daughters were taught the basics of presenting in PowerPoint in 6th grade and were required to use it for science and history projects in high school.

The fact is, I'd say it's safe to assume that almost everyone has seen at least one PowerPoint presentation - former Vice-President Al Gore re-emereged into the public consciousness with his award winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth"  which is really only a PowerPoint presentation on film.

Now, let's assume you've become quite comfortable with PowerPoint and it's your first line of presentation in your practice.

So...what's the problem?

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In the past few years you couldn't have helped but notice that things are changing in the courtroom. In 1996   the public got a glimpse of a (then) state-of -the-art courtroom presentation of the nationally televised trial of  OJ Simpson.  As I recall the only visuals provided were crime scene photos, a few timeoline graphs and several DNA-related drawings. Laptops were at the disposal of the attorneys and Barry Scheck made the most of an overhead projector.

More and more often in todays court an average jury will be made up of a majority of people who are visual learners. That is, they will want, at a deep psychological level, to have information presented to them visually. The majority of the public are quite comfortable getting their information via a "talking head" or through a demonstrative exhibit. 

Most jury psychologists, including Amy Singer, believe that people learn much more through seeing and hearing rather than from hearing alone.  The use of demonstrative evidence usually grabs the jury's attention and often has them sitting at the edge of their seats when things like models and objects are being shown.

Unfortunately, most litigators are auditory learners who prefer to teach orally.

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