Cogent Legal Blog

The following post is by Dave Nugent, Cogent Legal’s Senior Producer

At Cogent Legal, real estate and land use cases are among our favorite to support. They can offer up rich and tangible imagery to shape for jury scrutiny. We humans seem to be drawn to all things about “land.” Yet most real estate cases are really about contracts, escrows allegedly mishandled, government initiatives impacting developers, insurance coverage, or claims of fraud and breach of fiduciary duty.

Not surprisingly, trial teams for such cases, on occasion, come to us focused on a document-centric visual presentation—that is, focused on contracts and emails. In these instances we try to remind them of the following two tips to help win the attention and “discerning bias” of the jury: Read the rest of this entry »

This weekend, I’m heading to Monterey to give a presentation on “New Technologies for Federal Litigation” for the Northern District of California 2012 Judicial Conference. Since I’m going to discuss the use of courtroom technology while using my iPad wirelessly through an Apple TV, I prepared a handout that lists all the equipment you would need to use your iPad wirelessly or hardwired in court, including the price of the equipment and a schematic of the setups. It also lists a summary of useful apps for attorneys. If you’d like a free sneak peek of this handout on courtroom tech and apps, download the PDF here. Read the rest of this entry »

More often than not, litigating a case boils down to persuasively explaining your theory of what happened.

You bring in experts and witnesses to testify. You show photographs, documents, charts and graphs to illustrate your point. That’s all good and important. But how do you bring all of that information together to make your case in the most clear, compelling way? The answer often is to create a 3D animation. (Some recent samples of Cogent Legal’s animations are shown in a short video below.)

If your case involves the following, then it could benefit from an animation: Read the rest of this entry »

Generally speaking, there are two ways to prevail at trial: (1) have better evidence and demonstratives than your opponent, and (2) keep your opponent’s evidence out.

Cogent Legal worked on a couple of cases recently that demonstrated the power of superior demonstratives and excluding evidence. Read the rest of this entry »

I admit, I’m not the most consistent blogger. I try to publish a post at a minimum weekly, but work intervenes and makes blogging with regularity a challenge. I go for quality over quantity in blogging and respect the fact that I probably have 30 seconds or less to grab and hold the reader’s attention. (Hang in there, this turns practical, I promise!)

Are you an attorney who blogs—or have you been advised to start a blog? If so, I recommend a recent post on Lawyerist.com by Sam Glover called “What to Blog About (or: How to Keep Blogging),” which gives smart advice on how to avoid adding to the abundance of what he calls “crappy, dead law blogs” with “second-rate posts nobody wanted to read, anyway.”

That post got me thinking not only about my own blog, but about those blogs in the legal field I admire for sharing useful information in an authentic voice. I’d like to take this post to highlight a few that I regularly read. Read the rest of this entry »

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 big firms on cases that can attempt to overwhelm you with discovery, but that often have more trouble quickly reacting to the fast changes that occur in litigation. Read the rest of this entry »

I have always loved the challenge of figuring out a way to show a large set of information all in one graphic. The undisputed master of high information graphics is Edward Tufte, whom I had the privilege of seeing recently at his latest swing through the Bay Area. Mr. Tufte has made the point for years that you can trust the viewer of any graphic to decipher huge amounts of information, IF (and only if) you take care in the way it is presented so the viewer can find meaning in the data. I take his message to heart, especially when determining ways to show a great deal of data in a single graphic.

This post spotlights three informational graphics that Cogent Legal created and describes how we wrestled with a mountain of data to present a large amount of information in a way that is instantaneously understandable and visually appealing to anyone looking at the document. While these three samples are 2D blowups for display, they certainly can be made digitally with interactive functionality for display electronically as well. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s been a lot of hype about the iPad’s apps for the legal profession. I’m going to add to it with a prediction that may seem far-fetched, but I believe stands a strong chance of coming to pass: The iPad will revolutionize the way legal briefs are created, distributed and presented.

This post describes how the iPad is superior for e-briefs and links to an example so you can check it out. The end result can help you organize, visualize and present your case for any phase of litigation in the most engaging and effective way possible.

Read the rest of this entry »

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 the viewer—even evoked emotion—anchoring the speaker’s story to a now-shared understanding between that speaker and his/her audience. A bridge was built. And much of the speaker’s subsequent story would be understood in one or more ways through that shared understanding of the object.

Many trial or ADR PowerPoint presentations could benefit from recapturing the craft of the “Show & Tell.” Read the rest of this entry »

We all know procrastinators who wait until a week before the annual deadline to fulfill their mandatory MCLE requirements on subjects that many find the least interesting, such as ethics, substance abuse and diversity. My law school recently hosted a day-long program in late January that offered six hours of MCLE workshops to reach those attorneys who procrastinate, and I was asked to do one of the presentations. (Sounds like fun so far!)

I decided to focus on the ethics of social media for attorneys, which I genuinely find interesting and relevant. Read the rest of this entry »