Blogs

Legal team members who decide to take on trial presentation duties often have embarrassing failures in the courtroom. Why does this happen? Failure rarely comes from unfamiliarity with trial software. Failure typically comes from everything else associated with presenting electronically at trial from basic tech skills like connecting multiple monitors together, not having the right equipment or firm support. If you don’t have the right skillset, equipment or firm support for basic competency in trial presentation it is hard stop – don’t do it – a trial is not your learning environment. In today’s post I’m going to explain how to test yourself to see if you’re ready for the hot seat.

Everyone gets their start somewhere, make sure your start is equivalent to your technical skills and equipment capacity. Start with low volume, easy to display PDF exhibits – not video. As a trial tech, you can negatively impact the outcome of your case thru delay and technical error. It is important to recognize that being good in the hot seat is a multidisciplinary skillset encompassing a variety of technical and legal skills. Paralegal and Attorney newbies often wrongly think they can perform the trial technology alongside their other duties. More often than not, you can’t, so don’t wear too many hats during trial.

Testing yourself on presentation skills:

• Obtain an old trial outline with exhibit references along with the exhibit set used and load into your trial software.
  • Call up each exhibit referenced? How long did it take to call up the exhibit? If its more than 2-3 seconds, it took too long.
  • Do the exhibit names match the references in the outline? Are the page references correct?
  • What problems would you experience in court if a presenter isn’t using the correct references in their outline (typically the exhibit number)? The answer? The exhibit doesn’t go up on screen.
  • Highlight, underline and annotate sections of text mentioned in the outline.
  • What suggestions would you make so that communication is clearer between presenter and tech? TIP: Always use the exhibit and page number in an outline to reference anything to be called up in court. Make sure your exhibits are named after the exhibit number and are branded correctly with exhibit and page number.
• Test to determine if your team/firm is ready for you to be the hot seat
  • Are you a member of the team? Is your responsibility taken seriously?
  • Are you included in opening/closing and witness outline creation? Are copies provided in advance for you to prepare?
  • Does your legal team include you on practice runs of their outline?
  • Does your team allow you to go to court to test equipment and setup in advance?
  • Does the equipment you use conform to the tech standards of the trial software creator?
  • Do you have a backup computer?

Hot seaters often say putting the exhibit up on screen is the easy part, it's all the prep that is problematic. Many think it’s as easy to connect your laptop to a sophisticated courtroom presentation system as it is in the office (it isn’t) or don’t know how to fix a cable connection or configure their laptop resolution to the screens in the courtroom. Many courtroom environments use equipment that might change the resolution that you created your presentation in which can cause them to not look right – the presentation can shrink, stretch or go off screen and look just plain bad. (TIP: Always test in your presentation environment!)

The below tests a few of your basic configuration skills and troubleshooting resolution issues.

• In Windows, can you configure an extended screen so you have two different screens?
• Can you change the resolution of the extended screen to 1920x1080?
• Connect HDMI and external speakers to your laptop so the sound plays from the external speakers and not a connected monitor with speakers.
• Set your external monitor resolution to 1024x768 (this is the resolution in many courtrooms today) – what is the effect of the change in resolution on a PowerPoint? Presentations can grow, shrink or stretch if they are mismatched in resolution. Tailor your presentations and trial software prep to the resolution you are using in the courtroom.
• What font size makes your presentation legible on screen from a variety of distances? Use a test side to determine what colors, fonts, and sizes work in the courtroom.

Today’s post gives you a framework to test some basic skills needed to present competently in the courtroom. We’re just scratching the surface of what you can do to prepare yourself so you’ll be ready to present electronic exhibits and evidence. While some of this might be a bit intimidating, it is worth trying to determine if you are ready rather than turning the courtroom into your test lab. Having basic skills takes the hot out of the hot seat or at least makes it a little cooler and more approachable.

Shannon Bales is a Litigation Support Team Lead @ Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP and Author of “The Trial Presentation Companion” available on Amazon.