Here is a guest post from Brian Ford.

As a Multimedia Trial Site Specialist, the general rule of thumb has always been that a "seamless" presentation plays best in front of a Jury. This means, in part, avoiding the use of on-screen toolbars and minimizing vocal communication between the presenting attorney and the tech specialist.

My experiences have proven otherwise, though: Jurors are (and should be) focused on the evidence, more than how seamlessly it is presented. While it is true that a well-oiled presentation certainly can't hurt, these factors are nowhere near as important as the overall quality of the evidence, and the care that has gone into designing demonstratives.

Assuming the latter, a slight lag or visual hiccup isn't going to mean much to a Jury dedicated to a contemplation of the facts and a fair interpretation of the available evidence.

I'm sorry to say that I have never worked alongside a specialist for an opposing counsel who seemed to have a solid grasp of the technologies being utilized (slow loading times, fumbling through a list of documents, etc.) and -- barring a major technology disaster -- the Jury just doesn't seem to be affected by a seamless presentation vs. the all-too-common instances in which "the tech guy" is utilizing a visible tool bar or an on-screen drop-down menu. We give ourselves too much credit to assume otherwise, and I've long since stopped patting myself on the back regarding my “superior” grasp regarding the idiosyncrasies of trial presentation software.

While it's nice to believe that an invisible presence is the "clear plastic binder" that will make all the difference (this always sounds good as a sales pitch to an attorney who is contemplating the use of a trial-site specialist) I'm convinced that it's far more beneficial to do everything in my power to make the attorney's life easier -- i.e. disturbing them as little as possible as they prep a witness -- and that doing so will ultimately make a bigger impression on any given Jury.

The biggest aspect of this strategy is maintaining a close relationship with a paralegal or associate and, yes, working a bit harder the night before to familiarize myself with the documents that will be in use, without ever having to interrupt the presenting attorney's preparation.

(Even though every attorney is different, I find that few, if any, have as much time as we would all like to dedicate to little things such as going over documents, etc. As is often the case, the "ideal situation" is very different from the real world situations we often find ourselves in.)

Ultimately, the less an attorney has to think about or deal with technology, the more impressive he/she will appear in front of a Jury, and this is true even when it comes to a less-than-seamless presentation. On that front, I feel it is more important for a specialist to be comfortable than it is to be invisible and I would never discourage the use of on-screen displays to a novice who is nervous about relying on key commands.

I don't mean to rule out the concept of seamlessness because, again, it can't hurt to come across as professionally as possible in front of a Jury. I do mean to stress that most attorneys will be at their best when allowed to prepare without distraction, and without having to consider how to operate (say) a handheld scanner at the last minute.

This behind-the-scenes scrambling will always mean more work for the technology specialist, work which will be (by design) invisible to the attorney because, in the end, the work we do as specialists the night before (often right through to the morning of) a long day in the courtroom is far more important than hiding every tell-tale sign of our presence from the Jury, which knows we’re there despite our best efforts.

Technology, no matter how precisely driven, will never win a trial and the belief that we can affect a deliberating Jury via smoke and mirrors simply doesn't hold water, even if it sounds great as a sales pitch.

In practice, I can sell myself as a specialist with much more confidence by utilizing the above strategies than I can by highlighting hollow techniques centered around technology.

Thanks for the thoughts and information Brian.

• Read this Blog Post – One of the first questions I ask is “What do you know about me?” It amazes me the number of people of people that don’t even take the time and effort to type my name in Google and see what pops up. I have a reasonable internet presence and to not even look at my website or weblog, before coming to the interview is slack. I don’t expect someone to know everything about me, but to not even look at the website and the areas of practice shows a profound lack of interest, that I find unattractive in a job candidate.
• Read the Practice Management Section of the Blog – I’ve been writing for 2 1/2 years and have very specific ideas about how I want a law practice to run. My ideas are well thought out, but run counter to a lot of lawyers out there. But you can really get an idea for what I want by reading the practice management section of the blog.
• Be a Real Person – I’m not a high falutin’ person. Just because I have a J.D. doesn’t make me snobby. While I’ll be nice and cordial, I don’t want a hoity-toity employee. Be nice and be yourself.
• Be Used to Dealing with People – I have a Plaintiff’s practice and we deal with the public. We have a lot of workers comp cases and construction workers and other blue collar people. I find a lot of defense paralegals aren’t used to dealing with the public. Very few people really have the knowledge and skills to accurately judge how good of lawyers we are, but 100% know whether we’re nice to them.
• Be Technically Adept – You don’t have to be a power user, but knowing how to do a Google search and find information on the internet is useful. Knowing the difference between a .pdf and a .jpg is helpful. Knowing how to get information on the internets is helpful.

In the scheme of things, the only make or break question is someone that doesn’t even take the time before the interview to type my name into a search engine to see what pops up. So giving this tip on my blog isn’t really that much of a tip-off anyways. And in case you’re wondering, if someone has just moved and doesn’t have their computer unpacked or cable service set up, I will cut them some slack for that.

We cut the lunch hour from an hour to half an hour and came in half an hour early each day of the week. Then we work through lunch on Friday and leave at 1:00 p.m.

This give the employees time to schedule doctor’s appointments, get their hair cut, make appointments, run errands or just start the weekend early.

The nice thing about it is that they have a set time off each week to take care of things if they need to. Plus, it’s nice to have Friday afternoons off in the summertime at the beach.

PicLens is a FireFox or Explorer add-on (yes, it also works with Safari) that allows you to scroll through pictures very quickly.

Install it, go to Google Images and type in ‘herniated disk’ then click on the little > Play icon, and you will see a wall of herniated disks. While Google Images lets you see just the pictures, you have to flip through a page at a time. With PicLens, you don’t have to worry about the pages, you can just scroll through all of the pictures.

Trust me, it works much better than I can describe it. Check out the demo and then add it as a plug-in. Have fun.

Hat tip to Matt Homann for the heads up on this.

Once you get good testimony at a deposition, you're best to leave the testimony alone. Take the good answer from the witness and move on.

It seems like obvious advice, but some lawyers can't wait to read the good answer in the printed transcript. Perhaps not believing their good fortune, or perhaps wanting to relive the excitement of the five minutes when everything was going their way, they return to the question again a little later in the deposition. They ask the question to which they got a good answer a second time.

Why give the witness a chance to change or explain his answer? I can think of only a couple of reasons, neither of them very good: (1) You're not sure whether you've pinned the witness down or (2) you can't remember what the witness said.

I have to say that I’ve seen this more than once. When you get good testimony, don’t give the witness a chance to rehabilitate himself.

For more information on depositions, check out Evan’s excellent book: Deposition Checklists & Strategies.

It’s specifically geared towards, plaintiff’s personal injury work.

It is an off-shoot of the in-house program that Parker & Waichman has been using.

I heard about this system a few years ago and it looks great.

A few of the features that I like, when a case is set up, it sets up an extra-net or ‘mini-website’ for each client and case that allows them to see the accident reports, medical records or other information as it comes in.

• The ability to automatically forward cover letters and copies of documents to clients either by e-mail or snail mail as the documents are received (pursuant to the rules each law firm establishes – hereinafter referred to as "Rules Based"). For example, if a police report is received, if the law firm rules require, a cover letter and a copy of the police report is e-mailed to the client automatically as it was received, based upon the police report icon being linked to an image. Same will be true for all documents designed by the law firm ie: hospital records, medical records, medical reports, deposition transcripts, expert reports, orders, etc.
• A state-of-the-art Workflow system which pushes your cases through the claim and litigation process. The Workflow system will prevent any file from lingering. The Workflow system automatically creates documents that need to be created to satisfy the Workflow item that is currently due. As the Workflow proceeds, if the case status needs to be updated due to the progress made through the Workflow system, those case statuses will be automatically updated. The Workflow is fully customizable for each firm’s method of practice.
• SmartAdvocate™ automatically creates an Extranet website for each client so that a client, with a user name and password, is able to obtain, at any time, the status of their case, access to their case calendar, access to case documents, hypertext links to the staff working on their case (all Rules Based). Whenever their Extranet is updated with new information, the client receives an e-mail with a hypertext link bringing them back to their Extranet to see what changes have taken place in their case.
• If both the litigating firm and the referring firm are using SmartAdvocate™, as the litigating firm updates their case file, those updates are sent via the internet and logged into the referring firm’s corresponding case file for the relevant cases (on a schedule set by the cooperating firms i.e.: once a day, once a week, once a month, etc). This way the referring firm is always be in possession of the latest information as to the status of their cases. Further, the referring firm has the ability to e-mail a new case file to the litigating firm. The litigating firm has the ability to import all of the case data received from the referring firm without any retyping. Once the case is received and opened by the litigating firm, an acknowledgment is sent over the internet which is automatically filed in the appropriate case file of the referring firm, confirming that the case was received and reflecting the litigating firm’s file number in the appropriate field.
• If the litigating firm is using SmartAdvocate™ , but the referring firm is not, SmartAdvocate™ establishes an Extranet Website for each referring firm that is not a SmartAdvocate™ user. That website, with a user name and password, enables the referring firm to gain access to all of their files that they have referred to the litigating firm and to run pre-formatted status reports on those cases. This alleviates the necessity of the referring firm calling the litigating firm to get basic case status.
• SmartAdvocate™ has the ability to send your clients update letters automatically, at pre-determined time periods (Rules Based), and track for receipt of follow-up correspondence or telephone calls from the client responding to that letter, if appropriate.
• SmartAdvocate™ has the ability to automatically import new case inquiries and all of the related data taken in through your website.
• SmartAdvocate™ can classify and track cases by their estimated value. Track and evaluate cases and their profitability by using estimated resolution time and total case value features . SmartAdvocate™ also permits users to quickly determine aggregate insurance coverage for each case.
• SmartAdvocate™ is TAPI compliant. This means that if a client calls you from their home phone number, when the phone call is transferred to you, SmartAdvocate™ will read the caller id and automatically pull up the case that belongs to that client.
• SmartAdvocate™ has "Knowledge Base" system so that all research, by topic, on any given topic, can be saved in the "Knowledge Base" of SmartAdvocate™ so that all users can have the answers to the common/prior legal research without having to do the research all over again. This becomes especially handy and a major time savor (not to mention facilitates a more complete assignment ie: interrogatory) for motor vehicle statutes, building code violations, evidentiary issues, trial issues, etc. The statutes and case citations, with links thereto (if using the legal research interface being established with a 3rd party vendor or if the documents are on your network hard drive and linked by your users) are available instantly for all users.

I will let you know more as I find out, but this looks to leverage quite a few technology resources together to really help manage your practice.

• Unreasonable Expectations
• Won’t Follow Reasonable Medical Advice
• Won’t Follow Reasonable Legal Advice
• Abusive
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When people get injured, they’re in pain, they’re out of work, money is tight and at times they get stressed. It’s not unusual for the money situation to get tight, or the realize they need a surgery and don’t know how to pay for it, to get stressed and call the lawyer’s office mad.

It’s not unusual for a good client to get stressed in this very difficult time and in a very good relationship to get –3 heated phone calls in the course of a two year relationship. Normally, that is followed by a sheepish phone call the next day apologizing. It’s okay. We understand, it’s something we deal with on a regular basis and see all the time. I don’t mind that. We do what we can to help our people.

I’m not talking about people that get momentarily upset. We take the time to make certain they understand the legal process, what we can do and what we can’t do. We talk through what the problem is and what we can do to help them and then they refuse to listen. We explain the situation again and they agree. The next day they call with the exact same problem and pretend that we didn’t have the conversation of the day before. That’s a bad client.

Or perhaps we have to file suit and are beginning discovery. We need the Defendant’s discovery requests and need to take depositions. This will take two to three months and is explained to the client, yet they call daily asking where their money is and when they can expect a check.  That’s a bad client.

A client that won’t go to the doctor, refuses to follow the doctor’s orders and is non-compliant with their medical treatment is a bad client. More often than not, if they don’t go to the doctor, there’s nothing you can do for them.

A client that won’t listen to your legal advice is a bad client. We all know that it’s the client’s case and they get to make the decisions. We also know that sometimes, what is best for the client is not necessarily best for their legal case. I have no problem with that. I’m talking about when you tell the clients what the law is, and they argue with what they want the law to be. I’m not talking about a discussion, or the client asking questions. I’m talking about consistently arguing with the lawyer on what the law is and consistently not following the lawyers advice. I feel if they don’t want our advice, then they really should have a lawyer who’s advice that they like and will follow.

An abusive client, who calls 3–4 times a day, when told the lawyer is in court and there is not an emergency is abusive. A client who refuses to talk to the staff and let the staff deal with the situation is abusive. A client who when they have a problem, calls and says “He better call back, or we’ll fire him and get another lawyer”, when their case is up to speed and there has been consistent client contact is a bad client.

No matter how good a case is, that a bad client will find some way to make a mess out of it and with the added benefit of making your life miserable at the same time.

So what do you do?

• Talk About Expectations in the Initial Meeting – Make certain the client knows the typical outcome in their type of case (soft tissue cases will not make them rich), the good and the bad. Make certain they understand the time frames involved with treatment and the litigation process. Make certain they understand what to expect and their expectations are from the start.
• Check if They’re Nice People in the Initial Meeting – If they have a ‘difficult personality’ that will normally be apparent in the first call and the initial meeting, in the way they tell you about their case, whether they will actually answer your questions, or try to direct the conversation away from the information you need to know. If they’re difficult and hard to deal with at the beginning, it won’t get better.
• Keep the Client Informed – People are much easier to deal with if they know what’s going on with their case.
• If There’s a Problem, Talk to the Client – If you find, that despite your best efforts, you do have a problem client, don’t hide behind a secretary or paralegal, talk to the client. Spend the time to have a half hour conversation with the client instead of just a 5 minute touch base call. Hopefully, that conversation will get things on track.

If you have a bad client, you have a bad case. It’s that simple. In dealing with cases on a contingency basis, we can’t afford to have bad cases. Life is too short to deal with bad clients. Do what you can to screen for bad clients before you take them on. If you have make a mistake in judgment and find out you do have a bad client, then get rid of them as quick as possible.

I dearly loved my Japanese Panasonic Y2 but after three and a half years, it was time for an upgrade. After the third system failure in nine months, it really was time to get a new one. About 6 months ago, when the laptop went down, I was going to get a new laptop, but they got the Panasonic up and running and I put the new laptop purchase off. A month ago, the Panasonic’s hard drive completely and totally went out again and it was time to upgrade. Here’s what I have on the Toshiba Portege R500:

• Ultra-light – 1.72 pounds
• Ultra-thin – .77 inches thick
• Solid State Hard Drive – 64 gigabyte solid state drive
• Windows XP – Some non-Vista operating system love.
• Full size keyboard – I will have to double check, I think, there is a silght reduction in the size of keyboard (1mm – 2mm reduction), but it is a very nice full size keyboard that doesn’t take time to re-train your fingers to deal with.
• 12.1” Wide screen monitor – I’m nearly 44 years old and my eysesight isn’t what it once was (macular degeneration). I was a bit concerned about bumping down from a 14.1” monitor to a 12.1” wide screen monitor. My previous laptop before the Panasonic was a 12” laptop and I really think that’s too small. The new Toshiba has a widescreen which means it is actually the same size width way as the 14.1” monitor, but it is just not as long.
• Great LED display – Very crips display. Very nice look. It has an outdoor button to turn the backlighting off. The sunlight then bounces off the screen and brightens it. It actually does work. Neat stuff.
• Lots of Ports – 3 USB ports, 1 PC Card port, VGA out, SD card slot, firewire.
• Removeable battery – You can get a second battery for travelling, or a larger battery for when you want to be away from a power supply for an extended period of time.

So far, I’ve loaded up the software and am loving it. I’ll let you know more as I go along.

• Limited Damages with Very Clear Liability
• Tough Liability with Significant Damages

That’s a good rule of thumb. It takes an awful lot of time and effort to gear up for trial, and you typically want significant damages to be cost effective, but if there’s very clear liability, you can do that with lesser damages. Also, if your clients has several hundred thousand in doctor’s bills, then it doesn’t hurt to look harder for liability, or fight liability issues on contested cases. But I’ll add another caveat:

• If the Client is a Bad Client, Regardless of Anything Else, It’s a Bad Case

If there’s clear liability and significant damages, but your client is a problem client or bad client, then it’s a bad case. If they’re a bad client, they will find a way to sabotage their case.

All I want to do is do a 5–10 minute interview with my client and then pull 15 second clips out of the full length video. I didn’t need a lot of editing, but just wanted to pull out some clips. I’ve tried high end professional packages and low end consumer software. Nothing seemed to work.

I bought a Sony videocamera that recorded straight to mini-dvd’s. That was relatively easy, but it was still a hassle getting everything onto the computer.

I’m sure if I spent an entire day learning the camera and the software I could have figured it out, but who wants to do that?

I recently bought a Flip videocamera and can’t be happier. It’s about the size of a pack of cigarettes and runs on two ‘AA’ batteries. There’s no AC power, plug-in cord or adapter. Just two ‘AA’ batteries. There’s an on/off switch a record and pause button and that’s about it.

There’s an arm that flips out (hence the name) and plugs into a USB port. The software for the camera is built in to the camera. You can download straight to the computer very easily or upload a file to Youtube easily. Here is the law firm Youtube link and the family Youtube link. is There are no tapes, disks or memory cards. It can record up to an hour (in a single or multiple clips) and that’s it.

The picture quality is good, but not perfect. The microphone is much better than I thought it would be. And the best part of it? It only costs $145.

It’s cheap enough and light enough that you can take it anywhere with you. I’m very impressed with the quality of sound and picture, the ease of use, the size and how easily I can get the movie clips onto the computer or the internet.

About 2 years back, Apple started using the Intel processor in it’s computers, which is the same processor that Windows machines use. The benefit of that is that Macintoshes can now run Windows in ‘native mode’ and not through an emulation program. You can do this one of two ways. You can use Boot Camp and when you turn on your machine either boot into Windows or boot into Mac’s OS X. The other way is run a Macintosh program called Parallels. Both programs require you to purchase and run a full copy of Windows.

My tech guy is buying iMacs like the one pictured above to put in offices and using Parallels to run Windows. Most people will only see the OS X screen flash for a second and after that, they won’t even know they are working on a Mac box.

So what is the advantage of running Windows on a Mac? A few:

• Nice Hardware at a Reasonable Price – Chrome and glass, 20” monitor, memory, speed, decent memory all in one box. It works well and is attractive.
• Less Desk Space – The Macs are an all in one and leave a small footprint on your desk. It’s just the monitor and the keyboard.
• Ease of Maintenance – The entire Parallels Windows file is a single computer file. That’s huge. You can install Windows, tweak it to the way you want, install all of the programs that you want and then all of that information will be in a single Parallels file that can be copied and backed up. If your Windows goes down, you can just copy that file back to your iMac and you’re up and running. If your entire iMac goes down, you can copy that file to a different iMac and you’re up and running. No worrying about file registries, different hardware signatures. No fuss, no muss.
• Portability – Once you have your Parallels backup file, you can copy that to another machine without any problems. You can’t do that (easily) with Windows, because of different hardware configurations and the Windows registry.
• Ease of Installation – Once you have a specific set up that you want, for example, WordPerfect, TimeMatters, CaseMap, TimeMap, Sanction, MicroSoft Office, you can save this as a building block and as a base for every installation. Of course, you need to have a site license for each program. You will also have to switch license codes, but that’s a lot easier than starting each machine’s installation from scratch.

So oddly enough, the hoops that MicroSoft makes you jump through actually make it quicker and easier to run your Windows program on a Mac. Go figure. Plus you get a cool looking machine.

We’re going to start replacing one machine at a time, until we have a full Mac office.

Jessica: “What are you doing?”

Me: “I’m preparing for mediation. I’m a lawyer. I help people when they get hurt and have doctor’s bills and lose money because they can’t work.“

Jessica: “Oh….I was playing at the playground and fell down and hurt myself. I got a scab…But the scab fell off. Daddy, Can you help me?”

Me: “Ummm……no. You don’t have a case. But I can kiss your boo-boo and make it better”.

I wish I was making this conversation up.

truTV - formerly Court TV - will be stationed in the Horry County Courthouse to televise a pair of murder trials over the next two weeks.

A trial for Richard Gagnon, accused of killing his estranged girlfriend's parents in 2006, is scheduled to start March 10.

The Gagnon trial is expected to be televised live.

Bill Grammer, a good friend will be trying the case.

I’ve been talking to Cheryl Leone and she has emphasized this point. Cheryl says “If you have a case that’s worth $25,000 and you get the client $25,000 a year from now, or you get them $25,000 in a few weeks, which do you think makes for a happier client?”

That makes a lot of sense and I’ve never heard anyone say it before. The same amount of money sooner, makes for a happier client. Happy clients make for a better practice and a better life for the lawyer.

So the question becomes, what can you do to have the cases move quicker and resolve quicker? I’m not talking about slamming cases out the door, but what can you do to put cases together efficiently and quickly? Here’s a short list to get started:

• Only take cases that you have a familiarity with and can handle well
• Make certain you get the information you need to prepare the case at the beginning
• Only work with clients that are willing to help their own case
• Standardize documents – correspondence, pleadings, discovery
• Create checklists that your staff can follow on the handling of the case
• Order the medical records as treatment is completed
• Maintain contact with the client, so that you know about changes in the case as it happens.

I think that running a trial practice efficiently is critical.

• The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making by Scott Plous
• Legal Blame by Neil Feigenstein

Ken’s not only a past President of AAJ, but also a helluva trial lawyer. So when he takes the time to give advice, I listen. My copies of those books just arrived from Amazon and I’ll write more about them as I read them.

Thanks for the tip, Ken.