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Story Boards: An Indespensible Ally in Visualizing

By William S. Bailey and Robert W. Bailey

At its essential core, a trial in a personal injury case is a battle between two mutually exclusive visions of reality - yours and that of your opponent. Either view is plausible enough for a jury to believe, which is why each side is willing to run the risk of a trial. The jury's verdict is the final report card on whether a lawyer has succeeded or failed in planting his/her version of reality in the juror's mind.

The Importance of Visualizing a Case

In the quest for a courtroom victory on behalf of a client, no legitimate persuasion tool can be overlooked. One of the most powerful means of influencing the jury is through visual evidence. Although four decades have passed since Melvin Belli first began to emphasize the importance of using photos, models and illustrations at trial, lawyers have barely scratched the surface of what is available to prove a case visually. Most lawyers still rely on words alone to sell their vision of reality to a jury. Graphic images and demonstrative evidence are only spliced on as an afterthought, often shortly before trial. This is too little and too late.

In a society that is increasingly visually oriented, a lawyer's ability to control the visual field of play in the courtroom is often the difference between winning and losing. In the 1990's, jurors expect a lawyer to appeal not just to their ears through words, but also to their eyes through visuals. Both are equally important. This is the same reason why advertising agencies spent enormous resources to come up with just the right combination of words and pictures to sell a product. Information is not received in a vacuum. Rather, it is filtered through the value system and common experience of the jurors. If the lawyer does not tell and show jurors why a client deserves to win, the jurors may supply a vision of reality from their own experience which:

1. Does not accurately reflect what happened in the case; and

2. Causes them to reject the plausibility of the lawyer's theory of the case.

For example, in any given personal injury case, there are several critical pivot points on which a jury's decision will turn. What really happened on the day the plaintiff was injured? How badly was the plaintiff hurt? What could the defendant have done to have avoided the injury? Was it really feasible for the defendant to take the precautions that the plaintiff sets forth in the liability case?

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