MULTI-MEDIA PRESENTATIONS AT MEDIATION
By Gerald A. Klein, P.C.
More and more cases are being won and lost at mediation. AS the cost of going to trial and the risk of losing seem to increase every year, both plaintiffs and defendants are seeking to mediate cases earlier to resolve them, if possible, while reducing legal expenses and entirely eliminating a potential disastrous trial verdict The better lawyers are now rethinking how they approach mediation and often view mediation as the actual trial. The purpose of this article is to help lawyers add a new weapon to their mediation arsenal: the multi-media presentation.
The Reluctance of Old Dogs to Learn New Tricks
If we raise Abraham Lincoln from the dead-beside the fact that he would not look very good- he could probably try a case the next day. For the most part, lawyers have not changed the ways they have presented cases in over a century. Many lawyers still believe - or at least say they believe that juries are more impressed With a lawyer drawing diagrams on a board than seeing a "flashy" presentation. It is time for these lawyers to look at their calendars and move into the 21 st Century.
We live in a society where most people get their information from television and computer screens. The majority of our citizens are functionally illiterate. They can read the word's on a bus schedule, but struggle to determine when the next bus will arrive. They can read the words on their pay check but would have no clue as to how to determine what they had earned year to date. Lawyers must deal with this fact of life.
The entertainment industry - which makes its money by keeping people's eyeballs glued to the screen - recognizes the ordinary person has a short attention span. Television shows almost never last more than an hour, Film producers require virtually every movie to be two hours or less. Yet, many lawyers believe jurors -will sit riveted to their chairs keenly interested in six hours of testimony or two hours of an attorney lecture during final argument.
Until lawyers recognize that people are making decisions from selecting toothpaste to voting for President based upon sounds bites, they will finds they are delivering messages to people who are "not home." The concept behind a multi-media presentation is to engage an audience by presenting the spoken word, video evidence, photographs, animation, and physical evidence in such a compelling way that people With short attention spans can focus on the message and understand it.
The Concept of a Multi-Media Trial Presentation
Most lawyers believe that multi-media presentations begin and end with slick charts and time lines. However, while such charts are very effective in conveying a message, they can only hold the audience's attention for only so long. An effective multi-media presentation will include photographs, videotape of accident sites, video depositions, and even animation interwoven into the presentation of evidence or arguments.
