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Continued > Page 4 - Lessons from LA Law

This one visual aid allowed me to explain a "complicated" liability case in less than one minute. It brought my entire case together. I had all witnesses - plaintiffs and defendants - refer to it during their testimony. Every one of the defendant's "ten sins" was firmly linked to the testimony of one of the witnesses. My opponent was left fulminating that this was "poppycock" or "nonsense," but he could not think of a way to undo the damage this liability flashcard had done to his case.

Another visual knock-out punch can be delivered through the use of storyboards, which are essentially comic strips - telling a story through key scenes and dialogue. These are used to plan every ad, film and TV show produced in the world today and are readily adaptable to courtroom work. For example, in the Washburn case, a graphic artist was able to condense all the events leading up to the explosion in a few panels.

The storyboard technique was also used effectively in another case where a college student was rendered quadriplegic during a fraternity rush function. 5 The plaintiff had dived off some rocks into a body of water and collided with another diver.

Through a series of five storyboards, the graphic artist depicted the danger inherent in this scene. He showed how hard it would have been for a diver to see people in the water below and the need for a spotter at the water's edge that day. The drawings were so compelling that the parties settled the case shortly after the defense lawyers saw them.

Defendants use this type of visual evidence effectively too. In a case involving alleged dental malpractice for failure to obtain informed consent, the dentist showed an artistic recreation of the way the plaintiff's teeth looked before the extraction was performed. It was not the kind of smile you would see in a toothpaste ad. The artist's illustration of the decayed teeth had such an impact on the jurors that the parties settled the case shortly afterward. The jurors later remarked, "As soon as we saw the drawings, the case was over as far as we were concerned."

Opening statement is the best place to deliver a visual knock-out punch. Most jurisdictions encourage the use of demonstrative evidence, even on opening. 6 It is then that jurors form the hypothesis that determines how they view the evidence during the rest of the trial. A Roscoe Pound Foundation study 7 found that 40 percent of the jurors had established a clear verdict preference after the opening statement. If you use strong visual imagery during your opening statement, you greatly increase the odds that this verdict preference will be for your client's case and not your opponents. >>NEXT