Digital Trial Presentations are a relatively new aspect of litigation. Whereas courtrooms used to be lucky to have a VCR; many rooms these days come equipped with a full suite of equipment. And as juries become more tech savvy, they have also come to expect a multimedia experience when they sit down in the jury box. Adding strong audio/visual element to your trial not only emphasizes key points in your case but also helps ensure the jury will remember what you want them to.
Here are five benefits that using a trial presentation can have on your case:
- Peace of Mind
Courtrooms around the country are about as different and varied as the cases held within them. Some are state of the art with projectors, screens, and are equipped with all manner of AV equipment. Others are lucky to have a working DVD player. With such a wide breadth of setups, having a trial technician who not only has seen it all, but is equipped to fill in the technological gaps can be invaluable. You know that no matter what the courtroom includes, your videos will play, your documents will be shown and you can focus on your case, not the technology surrounding it.
- Enhanced Evidence
Have a crucial document you want to ensure the jury remembers? Depending on the courtroom you may have limited options. Best case scenario the court provides you with an ELMO and projector to display documents and evidence on, worst case you have to read aloud the document yourself and hope the jury remembers it or looks at the evidence binder during deliberations. However with a trial presentation you can ensure the jury sees exactly what you want to see when you want them to see it. A skilled trial presenter can allow for you to call up documents, videos or other exhibits on the fly as well as providing additional emphasis through zooming, highlights and other markups to drive your point home to the jury.
- Edits
It is not an uncommon occurrence for portions of depositions or exhibits to be redacted before showing to the jury. For paper transcripts, this is an easy fix, simply mark out the offending sections and move on. However things can get a bit trickier when a video or only part of a picture needs to be edited out. This is where a skilled trial technician comes in. In addition to the presentation software, most trial technicians come to trial equipped with photo and video editing software as well for just this sort of last minute rush. In fact, most trial presentation software allows for redacting in real time, totally eliminating the need for an expensive third party rush job.
- Impeaching Witnesses
While it’s not always intentional or malicious, a witness changing their testimony is always a possibility in any trial. Traditionally when that occurs, the best that can be done is to read their previous testimony back to demonstrate the discrepancy. However, with a trial presentation, you can not only put the testimony up on the screen for them to read as well, but also play back a video of prior testimony. There is nothing more powerful than seeing a witness give conflicting statements. It is even possible (depending on court room) to play back footage from earlier in the trial itself for this purpose.
- Organized Digital Case File
The first thing any trial technician will do when preparing for trial is to load all of the various transcripts, documents and exhibits into their computer and organize them into some kind of logical order. While the primary purpose for this practice is to be able to call up exhibits or transcripts at a moment’s notice, the benefits can also extend to you as well. Rather than sorting through hundreds of pages in a binder, you can simply ask the technician to bring up whatever document you would like to review or print out. Essentially your entire case can be contained on a laptop rather than trucking around voluminous binders and boxes.
Questions? Comments? We would love to talk more about what kind of benefits a trial presentation can offer your case. Give us a call at 937-222-2259 or 1-800-894-4327 for a personal demonstration!
In another article, 5 Technical Tips for Attorneys to Improve Video Depositions, we discuss what can be done at the deposition to ensure there is a better quality and more effective video to use during trial preparation and in your trial presentation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Steve Troncone has worked in the court reporting field for 11 years in multiple areas including videography, production, technology support and trial presentations. He has been working with Mike Mobley Reporting as a legal videographer and office support team member since May 2016.