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Making better presentations inside and outside of the courtroom

Pop culture is dominated by images of lawyers in the courtroom, from Perry Mason and Law & Order on television to movies To Kill a Mockingbird and A Few Good Men. In reality, many lawyers never set foot in a courtroom in their professional lives. Nonetheless, lawyers of all types regularly make presentations before groups of people; and these days, they often turn to presentation software to enhance their efforts.

Most presentation software packages for lawyers are dedicated to trial presentations. They include Sanction, Verdical and Trial Director. These programs offer robust features, including the ability to store vast amounts of evidence in an easy-to-access database, on-the-fly annotation capabilities, the ability to build and display elaborate timelines, video playback of depositions, presented side-by-side with the deposition transcript, and much more.

While especially beneficial for litigators presenting complex information, the software may not be suited for all lawyers. Some litigators involved in simpler cases on a lower budget may find the software to be overkill. Others may find the software ill-suited for non-courtroom presentations such as explaining a complicated estate plan to a client, guiding parties through mediation or teaching a continuing legal education seminar. In those cases, the vast majority of lawyers turn to Microsoft PowerPoint. According to the 2009 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report, 97 percent of respondents reported using PowerPoint for general presentations and 75 percent reported using the software for trial presentations.

Regardless of which software is used, there is a variety of tips that can help lawyers make their presentations more effective:

• Consider investing in a good presentation remote with an integrated laser pointer. The pointer will free you to move about more naturally before your audience rather than be tethered to a computer, and it can be used to highlight important elements on the screen.
  
• Know the limitations of your software. PowerPoint, for example, creates linear presentations. If your presentation involves going back and forth from one point to another—as is often the case at trial—you may find PowerPoint ill-suited to your needs. Indeed, constantly scrolling back through a series of slides to find the material you seek may be distracting and confusing to your audience.
  
PowerPoint will let you jump to a specific slide during a live presentation by typing in the slide number and hitting “enter” or by using the alternate click to call up a list of slides with titles. However, those techniques are only practical for a slide deck with a limited number of slides.

• Practice makes perfect. Practice is always important when giving a presentation, but when technology is involved, it becomes essential. Know the technology you're going to use backwards and forwards and be prepared to deal with glitches should they arise. Technical difficulties may undermine your credibility with an audience during trial or an important client meeting. In a heartbeat, your technology can go from a benefit to a liability.
  
• In adversarial situations, such as trial, don't ambush your opponent with your technology. Let all parties—and especially the court—know what technology you plan to use in advance to avoid last minute battles that could leave you without it.
  
• Turn off the technology when you want the audience to focus on you. Any time your screen is on, whether it's displaying a PowerPoint slide or an exhibit, some portion of your audience focuses on the screen and not on what you're saying. Use the projector's remote to blank the screen or insert blank slides into your PowerPoint presentation at appropriate times to achieve a similar effect.
  
Alternatively, pressing the letters “B” or “W” during a PowerPoint presentation will create a plain black or white background. By pressing B or W again you can toggle back to the slide presentation. Some remote presentation devices also make this function available.

• Invest time into making your presentations visually appealing. Your audience probably won't take you seriously if you show up to court in ripped shorts and a t-shirt, and they're unlikely to take your presentation seriously if looks like you tossed it together the night before. Avoid tacky clip-art, make sure you have a strong contrast between the text and the background, and use large elements that will be legible from a distance.
  
• Ultimately, keep in mind that good technology won't save a bad presentation, but bad technology may hurt an otherwise good presentation. Remember that the content of your presentation should be the focus, and apply your best judgment in deciding when to use technology and when to let the content stand for itself.

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