New episode of our video podcast, Speaking of Litigation: How can legal professionals transform complex arguments into compelling visuals without losing their audience in dense text?
In this episode, Epstein Becker Green attorneys Lauren Brophy Cooper and James S. Tam are joined by guest Brandie Knox, Founder and Creative Director of Knox Design Strategy, to discuss the legal industry's shift toward visual storytelling.
The group explores how visuals are transforming the way lawyers present arguments, from infographics and timelines to courtroom animations. The discussion highlights strategies for tailoring visuals to audiences, the importance of timing and delivery, and how attorneys are even using visual storytelling outside the courtroom.
Discover practical tips for making legal presentations more impactful and engaging in any setting, from courtrooms to boardrooms.
Podcast: Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Audacy, Audible, Deezer, Goodpods, iHeartRadio, Overcast, Pandora, PlayerFM, Pocket Casts, Spotify, YouTube, YouTube Music
Transcript
[00:00:00] Lauren Cooper: Today on Speaking of Litigation, we're discussing shifting from text based documents to visual presentations, strategies for visualizing complex information as a persuasive tool in and beyond the courtroom, and the importance of timing, cadence, and delivery in presentations. Hi everyone, I'm your host today, Lauren Cooper.
[00:00:22] Lauren Cooper: I am an attorney in Epstein Becker Green's litigation practice, and I'm based out of our Princeton, New Jersey office. It has come to our attention that lawyers are quite literally the last professionals who are working in Microsoft Word all day, every day. When I anecdotally told friends that I sign letters, “very truly yours,” they literally laughed out loud and couldn't believe that this is how we spend our days.
[00:00:51] Lauren Cooper: But it turns out that lawyers are making a bit of a shift from relying exclusively on Microsoft Word to utilizing PowerPoint where it can be effective to do so. Joining our discussion today I have two guests. I have James Tam, who is the Senior Counsel in the Health Care and Life Sciences practice based in EBG's Washington, DC office.
[00:01:14] Lauren Cooper: And I also have Brandie Knox, who is the Founder and Creative Director at Knox Design Strategy and the CEO of Moxx, a digital trial notebook. Thank you both for being here today.
[00:01:25] Brandie Knox: Thank you. Great to be here, Lauren.
[00:01:28] James Tam: Thank you. Great to be here.
[00:01:30] Lauren Cooper: As I mentioned, historically and frankly, still today, the legal industry is relying heavily on voluminous written documents as our primary means of persuasion.
[00:01:41] Lauren Cooper: We write very lengthy briefs, sometimes even asking for more pages than the 40 the court has given us so that we can persuade a judge or other decision maker to rule in our favor. But as we know, in today's fast paced environment, our attention spans are shorter than ever, and I suspect the judge's law clerks are as well.
[00:02:04] Lauren Cooper: And decisions are often influenced by how effectively a case can be presented visually. James, can you tell us a little bit about how this has evolved over the last few years?
[00:02:16] James Tam: In the professional and personal aspects of our lives we are consuming large amounts of information in different mediums, whether it's video, audio, television, streaming.
[00:02:27] James Tam: And sometimes we were consuming from multiple sources simultaneously. Our legal profession, it tends to be heavy, written, text-based in terms of how we communicate with our audiences, whether it's comprised of other lawyers or non-lawyers. And this doesn't fit well with the current environment of a short attention span.
[00:02:45] James Tam: All aspects of our society are advancing faster than the legal profession, which is grounded in tradition in terms of how we communicate. There are many other settings that are similar that have caught up to society. For example, if we look at news reporting, there are still newspapers, but also think of a typical news program equivalent, which is meant to communicate numerous and complex fact intensive events in very well packaged segments.
[00:03:12] James Tam: And this is done on a daily basis. These segments may even be boiled down to less than a minute in length of content consumption, like a very well-curated TikTok story where tools to develop this visual content is accessible to anybody with a smartphone. Our legal profession has been playing catch up and we're doing a better job at presenting complex legal topics in visually engaging ways, but we're not quite caught up there yet.
[00:03:35] Lauren Cooper: I think that's a really good point, James. Particularly with attention spans and what viewers are looking for. I can't even get through a TV show without looking at my phone and scrolling. The highlights reel of the scenes from next week catches my attention a lot faster than the 45-minute episode of a show that I enjoy.
[00:03:57] Lauren Cooper: So when we're talking about dense, legal, written materials I think the legal profession is behind. We are still operating under, I think, the false assumption that people want to sit and read these lengthy and complex arguments. So can you talk to us a little bit more about how we still use briefs and written materials, but are using visuals in conjunction with those written materials.
[00:04:30] James Tam: Yeah, to be clear, yeah, there is still that need to keep to our use of the traditional written brief or memorandum. Visuals can act as a supplement to help us more effectively reach our audiences to communicate complex topics that are described in those longer briefs or memos.
[00:04:45] James Tam: So the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is very relevant. Many times, the audience of decision makers that we lawyers want to reach are policymakers in the government, government authorities, boards of directors at companies, or even the general public sometimes. These audiences may already be accustomed or even expecting visual presentations when they're hearing us lawyers present our complex legal topics for the first time.
[00:05:10] James Tam: And this is an instance where knowing your audience is really critical. Your audience may be hearing about your topic for the first time, so diving into a written work product may not be well received. A visual presentation may be able to reach and connect with your audience in a way that the long form writing could not. And this is especially true for those visual learners in your audience.
[00:05:31] Lauren Cooper: James, I think that that is a great point. And one of the things that, as litigators in particular, as we are going into sometimes antiquated courthouses and courtrooms, historical buildings, it's important for us to think about if we want to use these visuals, how are we actually able to display it to our audience, whether it be a judge or an arbitrator.
[00:05:56] Lauren Cooper: Obviously if something's happening in a modern office building, there's Zoom and screens, and the pandemic really upped the technology game to be able to do things on screens and virtually, but in a courthouse you may not have the same luxury, and even in a conference room, if you have people who are appearing by Zoom and utilizing the screen that's in that conference room you may need to think ahead.
[00:06:21] Lauren Cooper: I can say from experience, we had one situation where we were arguing a motion. We prepared a PowerPoint to go along with that motion. And we knew that there were going to be participants via Zoom and those participants were going to be utilizing the screen that was in the conference room.
[00:06:43] Lauren Cooper: So we actually went ahead and hired a vendor, a technology vendor to bring in individualized screens for each of the participants in the conference room. So that way we could control what technology was available rather than spending all this time and money putting together a visual that we couldn't use because the technology capabilities were not where we needed them to be to make that happen.
[00:07:07] Lauren Cooper: I think that also for courtrooms, it's always helpful for litigators to call ahead or send a letter to the judge, whatever your jurisdiction permits in terms of communications with the court, and find out what the technology capabilities are before you spend a lot of time putting together a visual to tell your story, only to get there and find that you can't actually use it because there's not the appropriate technology.
[00:07:34] Lauren Cooper: I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about how we make effective presentations, how we take our voluminous and dense written materials that we will be bound to forever as lawyers, but we are trying to move away from relying on that exclusively, and upping our game in terms of using visuals and being more persuasive.
[00:07:56] Lauren Cooper: PowerPoint, I think, is the most commonly utilized format for creating a visual for an audience. It's funny. Before I went to law school, I was a teacher and I used PowerPoint to teach my middle school science students the stages of mitosis, for example, but that was a very long time ago.
[00:08:21] Lauren Cooper: And that was before PowerPoint was called “decks.” I didn't know what a deck was after I stepped away from the teaching world, cause it didn't have a cool name, back then it was just PowerPoint. But I was certainly not a PowerPoint expert when I was a teacher. I was really proud of myself that I figured out how to make the stages of mitosis fly in on the screen, ring with a bell and flip in a circle so that my 7th graders were really excited to take notes on the stages of mitosis. And unfortunately the new PowerPoint I don't know how to use anymore because I haven't used it in 20 years and I just, those skills are dusty to say the least, and they were never really to a level of being able to use in a professional setting.
[00:09:16] Lauren Cooper: And we as lawyers have spent so much time working on our written product, our craft, making writing really concise, and compelling briefs, because that is the format that we have to use. But we are now leaning on people with real expertise to supplement those written materials and put together really eye-catching, powerful visuals, usually in the form of a PowerPoint.
[00:09:45] Lauren Cooper: So this is where Brandie comes in. Brandie, I'd love for you to just describe the process that you go through if you work with lawyers who are asking you to put together a visual, and usually a PowerPoint. What does that process look like? How long does it take? Tell our listeners what's involved to move away just from the brief and to bring in a powerful visual
[00:10:11] Brandie Knox: Really, it starts with an initial phone call with the attorneys, myself, some designers from our group. I talk about high level, what the case is about, the key facts in the case.
[00:10:25] Brandie Knox: We talk about the logistics of timelines and so forth. But after having that overview, we take all that material, we digest it, we make sure we have a thorough understanding. We're not lawyers, so by thorough I mean a thorough, high-level understanding of the core objectives. And we start to put together an outline.
[00:10:48] Brandie Knox: So what are the key message points that we want to deliver? What are the possible visuals to support those messages? We look at what exhibits and things we might include from the materials that are delivered or what types of graphics we might actually create to supplement that. So we send that back to the litigation team for feedback before we begin the visual exploration.
[00:11:10] Brandie Knox: We look at what are the key takeaways that your audience needs to come away with. Is it possible that visuals can aid in telling your story and what messages need to be most memorable? Your brain processes visuals 60% faster than content, so that's something you certainly want to keep in mind.
[00:11:29] Brandie Knox: And these things can be as simple as really a screenshot from a quote, from a deposition, or if it's a dispute about a contract that's highlighted within a brief. That is a visual in its most simple form, in very specific ways that you can emphasize where you want to keep your audience focused and what those key takeaways need to be. And it can be more complex in terms of infographics.
[00:11:52] Lauren Cooper: Yeah, I think that's a great point, Brandie. When we write briefs, particularly in contract disputes, there's always certain provisions of the contract that we're focused on. And usually to highlight those provisions to the court, we put a block quotation in the middle of the brief with a lengthy contractual provision and often it can get lost, right?
[00:12:15] Lauren Cooper: People don't really like block quotes. I think it's not visually appealing to read a lengthy block quote, but at the same time, you want to highlight that contractual provision if it's at the heart of the dispute. So, can you give some examples, Brandie, as to how you might be able to take something like a contractual provision, or like a timeline of events, and turn that into a powerful visual in a PowerPoint?
[00:12:45] Brandie Knox: Sure. In the first example, we've created very simple things of pulling out, so even on a screen or within a brief you have pages and pages of contracts, material. Typically, as you noted, it's one or two lines that are the areas of conflict or discrepancy.
[00:13:07] Brandie Knox: Calling those out, highlighting them, maybe extracting them and making them larger and bolder within a brief. And those are very simple tactics that really can be done in-house, potentially. In other examples, during COVID we worked on a mediation on a health care case, and in that mediation, one of the things we needed to really point out was how an emergency room visit becomes a bill, and there are many, many steps at many, many levels.
[00:13:38] Brandie Knox: It's very complex. Now, writing that up in a narrative in a paragraph form is really I feel like an audience will glaze over reading through that and trying to digest that. But we presented that, we broke it out into infographics in different stages. And so when it was delivered, the attorney walked through, step by step with the visual, and each time, each click, it built upon itself.
[00:14:04] Brandie Knox: It helped establish the process of an emergency room visit becoming a bill and all those necessary steps. But it really helps not only simplify the process, but also show the audience, indeed, how complex and how many touch points that one visit had as it went through the necessary steps.
[00:14:23] Lauren Cooper: What about something like financials, Brandie, right?
[00:14:26] Lauren Cooper: We have “damages models” and financials and spreadsheets that are actually very difficult to submit to the court as an exhibit. Obviously we find ways to do so, but how can you turn financial information into a more powerful visual so people are not scrolling through tiny lines of an Excel spreadsheet?
[00:14:50] Brandie Knox: Exactly. Excel can be very daunting and also difficult to share in a courtroom setting. One example we have, we created a very simple bar chart to highlight the gaps and what two opposing parties were disputing over. And really, the case boiled down to “one side didn't do what they said they were going to do.”
[00:15:11] Brandie Knox: So the brief established, well, opposing side A said they were going to do X, Y, and Z in terms of money that was going to be raised. You could share those numbers and talk about, well here's what they said they were going to do and here's what they actually did. But what we did in layering that in a bar chart was to establish the gap between what they said and what they were going to do. And that was really the focus.
[00:15:36] Lauren Cooper: That's really helpful, Brandie. Thank you. And James, you're not a litigator, right? So you're not preparing visuals, PowerPoints, for purposes of a mediation or a motion or a trial, even though you're on the litigation podcast, but we want to talk a little bit about how do you use visuals in your practice, which is a non-litigation practice?
[00:16:03] James Tam: Yeah, a couple examples come to mind. First one, this one was not in a litigation context, but this was a project working with a health regulatory agency to request a change in a policy that was currently affecting or causing an adverse impact to a health care client and his patients. We submitted a written letter describing the request in great detail, but to really get the attention of the decision makers, we had the opportunity to have an in-person meeting to present the issue.
[00:16:32] James Tam: As a quick background, in the day to day operations of health care, we use numerous sets of alphanumeric code sets to speak the language of health care. I use a slide presentation to limit that focus to that one relevant, very specific alphanumeric code impacting the situation and also the broader policy and guidance surrounding that one single code to explain that impact was having to my client and his patients.
[00:16:58] James Tam: So to the main decision makers in the room, it was important because not everyone has read in on that topic of the meeting, what the topic of the meeting actually was, which was already difficult to explain. And also copies of the presentation served as another useful purpose. So there's no guarantee your entire audience will have the time or opportunity to read through your longer-form written work product.
[00:17:21] James Tam: So that PowerPoint served as an executive summary that boiled down the issue in a very simplified visual package. Another example that comes to mind is in the mergers and acquisitions transactional context, where we conduct legal diligence of various areas of a target company, including a company's active or pending litigation risks. It is not uncommon that litigators are called to conduct this diligence and will have to communicate their findings, not in the courtroom, but in a boardroom.
[00:17:51] James Tam: And in this context, a visual PowerPoint is immensely important for that litigator to effectively communicate those litigation risks for board members to weigh in on their decision making of that transaction.
[00:18:03] Lauren Cooper: I think it's pretty clear there are a number of scenarios where a visual could be really beneficial to a client.
[00:18:12] Lauren Cooper: It's not simply in a litigation context for purposes of a trial or a big arbitration, or even a really important mediation, or even for something smaller, like a motion before a judge that maybe raises complex issues, and so it would be helpful to have. Sounds like we can use visuals well beyond the traditional litigation context through regulatory work, through M&A work.
[00:18:39] Lauren Cooper: And this is something that in-house counsel, general counsel, should be thinking about when engaging with their lawyers. I think in-house lawyers often come to outside counsel for their expertise to aid them in something that's really problematic. And thinking about how we can use visuals for that problem with our in-house partners I think is something that is important for us to raise early on with clients.
[00:19:08] Lauren Cooper: But let's talk about how we make them good, right? It's just like you can write a brief, and there are bad briefs and there are amazing briefs. The same is true with visuals. My seventh grade PowerPoint presentations I do not think would carry the day in a courtroom with its spinning words and dinging bells as words flew in.
[00:19:30] Lauren Cooper: It's really important to think about timing, cadence, delivery in these presentations, so that they really become a tool and not another means of dumping more complex information. I think we have all been on the receiving end of a PowerPoint where someone is reading to us the words, every single word that is on that PowerPoint slide.
[00:19:55] Lauren Cooper: And that might be even more boring than reading a bad brief. It feels torturous to sit through those presentations. So I think it would be really helpful to talk about how we can make sure that our visuals don't have the same problems as really dense, complex writing. So Brandie, I want to talk a little bit about a fun project that we worked on together.
[00:20:19] Lauren Cooper: So Brandie and I worked on a PowerPoint for a trial and part of the documents that were produced in that case were somewhat salacious text messages. And we wanted to showcase those text messages. And for all the litigators out there, we could have a whole other podcast on how to collect text messages and WhatsApp messages from our clients’ electronic devices as part of the ESI process.
[00:20:50] Lauren Cooper: There's frankly no good way to do it. The way that those text messages are collected reads even worse than it does on your phone. So you end up getting either Excel files or PDFs with all of the text messages on the same page. It's hard to tell who's saying what. It's hard to tell what time things were sent.
[00:21:11] Lauren Cooper: The collection of text messages in discovery is a whole other issue. But when you get them, and you often do in litigation, and when they're good, which they often are, because many people are very honest and quick to say things via text that they wouldn't necessarily say in an email. And so text messages are becoming just a vital part of the discovery process.
[00:21:35] Lauren Cooper: And so when you do get those salacious text messages as part of discovery and you want to utilize them, how do you do it in a way that's not Excel files or hundreds of pages of PDF where you can't figure out who's saying what? And so Brandie, can you talk a little bit about how you were able to take PDF text messages that were hard to follow and really utilize them in a powerful way?
[00:22:08] Brandie Knox: Yeah, so the most simple way to include those exhibits, as you noted, there were pages and pages of scanned text messages that were critical to the case. The messages showed the adversary’s intentions. The easiest way would have been to just project them in their existing form up on the screen, which was very difficult to control the cadence and to really show the specificity of who was saying what.
[00:22:29] Brandie Knox: We recreated these so they animated in seamlessly on the screen. Each screen had a series of text messages along with the date, the time, the individual who said that along with a little photo, a headshot of that person. It enabled the audience to really be a part of that narrative and to be brought into the story.
[00:22:56] Brandie Knox: As if they were part of the text channel themselves. This also enabled the litigation team to highlight specific areas they wanted to call attention to when they were presenting the case.
[00:23:06] Lauren Cooper: And as someone who worked on that and was able to see how it played out firsthand in the courtroom, you all know what it's like to scroll, right?
[00:23:17] Lauren Cooper: We're all so used to the scrolling of text messages, find a message, to read someone something. So the fact that PowerPoint could go through the text messages in that same scrolling fashion was really powerful. And I was a law clerk for two years in two different trial courts before I went into private practice.
[00:23:41] Lauren Cooper: And always during trial you could tell that a presentation or cross examination or an opening or closing was powerful if the courtroom security officer was paying attention. I always find that the security officers are either looking at their phone or kind of just looking around the courtroom.
[00:24:02] Lauren Cooper: But when they're looking at the presentation, you know you’ve done something powerful. And I can tell you that when these text messages were up on the screen, scrolling through just like you would on your phone, everyone was locked into that screen, most especially the court security officer. So I knew we had done something really powerful because it caught everyone's attention.
[00:24:27] Lauren Cooper: These are people who watch trials all day, every day. And so when you can catch their attention you know it's effective. James, can you talk to us a little bit about timing and cadence and powerful presentation in a sort of non-litigation setting?
[00:24:44] James Tam: Yeah, thinking back to my first example in my attempt to change a policy.
[00:24:49] James Tam: It's also reinforced via that storytelling method. Before I got to the denser legal issues that needed addressing, it was first important for me to present a hook to grab people's attention by speaking to the clinical impact of this problem, to the patients ultimately. This really got the attention of the health care regulators with the medical backgrounds in the room.
[00:25:08] James Tam: Once I was able to get their attention, I was able to dive into the legal aspect. I used a sequential timeline visual to untangle the legal issues. I was able to reconstruct the issue one law at a time as each relevant law was passed, all culminating in my ultimate ask of making a change to the current state of policy that was affecting my client and his patients, which would not have made sense until that point.
[00:25:29] James Tam: This presentation was done in a stepwise fashion, one slide at a time, similar to how you tell a story one paragraph at a time. So I completely agree with Brandie's point. As lawyers, our main goal is to advocate for our client. All aspects of a presentation are curated to facilitate how your message is communicated.
[00:25:47] James Tam: From the visuals used, the written text and the spoken narrative accompany the PowerPoint. And these aspects, they must be well practiced and in sync in order to effectively get your points across.
[00:25:57] Lauren Cooper: Yeah, I think the real key is simplicity. People don't want to pay attention if it's overly complex, if it's convoluted. If there are too many words on the screen, the glazing happens almost immediately.
[00:26:14] Lauren Cooper: If all we're doing is reading a timeline and that whole timeline is populated on the screen at the time that you pull up the slide, no one is paying attention to the order of how things happened, to keying in on any one specific event. If you can very simply do a timeline event by event by event, and highlight them as they come up in a simple and easy way, you're going to be much more effective than doing one slide with 19 different events in the timeline. Everyone is going to be glazed over.
[00:27:00] Lauren Cooper: No one's going to pay attention to the timing and the importance of that timing which often is key in litigation and otherwise to understand the timing of events and how things went down. So what do we do? I think that these are great ideas. To use a PowerPoint to create a visual to get away from a lot of words in a Microsoft Word document, but like, how do you actually make it happen?
[00:27:23] Lauren Cooper: What's the way that we can take this from being a good idea, it's definitely a good idea to use PowerPoint, but how can you actually take the steps so that you can implement it? What are the keys to make that happen?
[00:27:38] Brandie Knox: I'll just add to start simple. Like I noted, it can be as simple as a call out in a brief.
[00:27:45] Brandie Knox: But again, if there are too many words or too much information on a slide, your audience is likely not listening to what's being said. They're reading what's on the slide. Cadence can really, you can control where their focus is and what they're reviewing. So start simple. There's a lot of bells and whistles in an application like PowerPoint.
[00:28:06] Brandie Knox: You don't need most of them. You can be very effective. You don’t want them focused on, wow, how did Lauren make that rotate and slide when it can just easily flow in and you've grabbed it, you've gotten their attention. And particularly if you're uncomfortable with moving into more visual space, start with small steps. See what happens, become more familiar over time with your presentations.
[00:28:34] Lauren Cooper: Any thoughts on your end, James?
[00:28:36] James Tam: Yeah, I'd just like to add, the best PowerPoint presentations, they go through several drafts and are practiced several times. It's just like how you would treat a brief or a memo writing. Going through the presentation multiple times helps you hone down your visuals and your accompanying narrative to ultimately get to a presentation that your audience will listen to.
[00:28:55] Lauren Cooper: I think those are all great points. Start small, don't be overwhelmed with just doing something visual. And starting early, because I think that like any piece of written work, it takes time. The best briefs are those that you write and rewrite several times. The other thing that I'll say is it can be beneficial to use someone who's not on the litigation team because lawyers, litigators in particular, seem to think every detail is important.
[00:29:27] Lauren Cooper: And we sometimes have a hard time getting out of the weeds. And I think that using someone with visual expertise, like Brandie, really makes you think about what are the most important issues that you need to present. And all of those details that you think are really important, when you go to put it in a visual, I think you find sometimes they're really more background.
[00:29:49] Lauren Cooper: It's helpful, but they're not the key point. And I think, in addition to the visual being a more effective way of communicating, I think it also can force practitioners to change how they think about their case and how they need to try it or present it.
[00:30:07] Lauren Cooper: I think this has been a very helpful and interesting discussion about visuals. The lawyers are coming out of the dark ages. We're going to be catching up with the rest of the world as we utilize and rely on visual more.
[00:30:24] Lauren Cooper: So I just want to thank James and Brandie for joining us today and talking about this topic.
[00:30:29] Brandie Knox: Yes. Great to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:30:32] James Tam: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
[00:30:33] Lauren Cooper: Thanks to everyone for listening today, and subscribe to Speaking of Litigation on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
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