TECHNOLOGY & THE TRIAL LAWYER

THE POWER IN POWERPOINT

by Susan J. Silvernail

Microsoft's PowerPoint is a powerful tool to take with you to mediation or the courtroom. Granted it lacks the flexibility (and the cost) of some of the higher-end legal specific presentation software packages like Trial director and Sanction. But chances are good that you already own PowerPoint as part of the Microsoft Office suite, you can easily learn to use it, and most importantly, that PowerPoint is all the presentation software that you need.

PowerPoint is easy to use straight out of the box. It provides a number of user-friendly features including tutorials, and pre-defined graphic templates. PowerPoint offers a basic set of drawing and animation tools. It comes with a "screen show" feature that enable you to arrange the created slides in whatever order is best suited for the presentation.

Therein lies the rub. PowerPoint is a slide show. Its scripted nature makes PowerPoint better suited for opening statements and direct examinations. Trial Director or Sanction make it easier to call up an image or a document out of order and hence, may be better suited for cross-examination.

But having said that, PowerPoint gives you everything you need o produce a professional-looking presentation. If you're one of those who've been turned off by PowerPoint because you've encountered too many speakers who were chained to their bullet point slides then, please be assured you can use it to build sophisticated presentations, using or combining text, video, still pictures, and graphics, including charts, time lines, tables and animations.

And if you're married to your bullet points, I can only say… "Show don't tell!". Seriously, using slide after slide consisting of nothing but text is a poor way of getting your message across. Sure, pure text slides tell a story but it is the same story you are telling orally. Maybe the jurors will remember some of the facts by reading along with you, or maybe they will not like being read to and will tune you out. The point here is to illustrate your words, not repeat them.

A better approach would be to think about the concepts your jury must understand in order for you to win. And think about what you can show the jurors to help them understand your case. For example, think of visual images in terms of concepts such as these:

• Illustrating relationships. Help the jury keep straight all the people involved in your case by creating a flow chart or an organizational chart. Use the flow chart to show the jury how the people are related by facts, circumstances, or blood. You can visually make the point on how close some of your people are. Refer to it constantly as the story progresses.
• Illustrate time frames. Help the jury visualize the sequence of events in your case. The jury should not have to rely solely on their memory of your spoken word to remember the times of all the events in your case, so offer them a time line. Again, refer to it constantly as the story progresses, so as to imprint your chronology of events in the jurors' minds. As we know, sometimes a jury's determination of when something happened can be the difference between winning and losing.
• Distance and direction. You can be sure somebody on your jury will be direction-challenged. If distance and direction are important to your case, then take a regular map or diagram and scan them into your computer, or import a map from www. mapquest.com into your PowerPoint presentation.

Finally, to inform and persuade your jury, you should display images of real evidence that you expect will be admitted at trial. You can make very effective use of your paper exhibits by showing them during opening argument and direct examination, set out in full against a neutral background. Correspondence, contracts, and corporate documents are all the stuff of great slides. Once you've shown the paper exhibit full screen, focus the jury's attention on the part that is critical to your case by using a "call-out" box. That emphasizes the important language by setting it apart and framing it.

This article first appeared in the Alabama Trial Lawyers Journal, Autumn 2003, Volume 23, Number 4 issue.