The Litigation Consulting Report

12 Costly Mistakes Lawyers Make When Preparing for Trial Too Late

ken@persuadius.com (Kenneth J. Lopez, J.D.) — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 15:00:00 GMT

The difference between preparing a case and preparing to win it may be the most expensive distinction in litigation.

Imagine this scenario.

A litigation team has spent three years preparing a complex commercial case. They've reviewed two million documents, taken 47 depositions, retained six experts, filed countless motions, and billed thousands of hours.

They know the facts. They know the law. They know the opposing counsel's arguments almost as well as their own.

Trial begins in three weeks.

And someone finally asks:

"What's our story?"

Silence.

Then another question: "Have we tested any of this with jurors?"

More silence.

"Who's putting together the opening statement graphics?"

"We're working on that."

"Have we hired a trial technician?"

"Not yet."

Sound familiar?

After nearly three decades working with trial teams, I've seen variations of this scenario more times than I care to count.

And here's the uncomfortable truth: Some of the hardest-working lawyers in America are among the least prepared for the part of litigation that actually happens in front of a jury.

Not because they're lazy. Not because they're incompetent. And certainly not because they don't care.

It's because preparing a case and preparing to persuade a jury are two very different things.

Unfortunately, the distinction often becomes apparent when there's almost no time left to do anything about it.

1. Discovery Is Not Trial Preparation

Let's start with a fundamental misunderstanding.

Discovery is about finding and understanding evidence. Trial preparation is about deciding what that evidence means, how to organize it, and how to make twelve strangers care about it.

These are related activities, but they require different skills.

You can spend three years becoming the world's leading expert on the facts of your case and still struggle to explain those facts to someone who has never heard of your client, your industry, or the underlying dispute.

In fact, your expertise can become a liability.

The more you know about a case, the harder it can be to recognize which details matter to someone encountering it for the first time.

Psychologists call one aspect of this problem the curse of knowledge. Once we know something, it becomes difficult to imagine not knowing it.

Trial lawyers are particularly vulnerable because they spend years immersed in information that jurors must begin absorbing in a matter of hours.

The question isn't whether you understand your case. It's whether the jury will.

And that question should be driving your preparation long before the trial date appears on the horizon.

2. Your Trial Story Shouldn't Be the Last Thing You Develop

Here's a question I like to ask trial teams:

"If you had to explain why your client should win in one sentence, what would you say?"

Sometimes I get a crisp, memorable answer.

Other times, I get a fifteen-minute explanation involving procedural history, contractual provisions, industry terminology, and three exceptions to the general rule.

That's not a story. That's a deposition outline.

Every compelling trial presentation needs a central narrative that helps jurors organize the evidence and understand why it matters.

That narrative shouldn't emerge accidentally during the weekend before opening statements.

It should influence which witnesses you emphasize, which exhibits you feature, which demonstratives you develop, and how you prepare your experts.

Without it, trial preparation becomes an exercise in assembling information rather than communicating meaning.

And the closer you get to trial, the harder it becomes to change direction.

3. You Discover Your Case's Biggest Weakness When It's Too Late to Fix It

One of the most valuable things a mock trial can reveal is something the trial team never seriously considered.

Perhaps jurors don't trust your key witness.

Perhaps they misunderstand a technical issue.

Perhaps an argument the lawyers consider devastating barely registers with ordinary people.

Or perhaps the defense that has consumed hundreds of attorney hours actually makes jurors more suspicious of your client.

These discoveries are useful when there's time to respond.

They're considerably less useful when opening statements begin Monday morning.

Mock trials and focus groups aren't simply opportunities to predict what a jury might do. They're opportunities to identify persuasion problems while you still have time to address them.

A well-designed jury research exercise can influence the trial story, witness preparation, opening statement, graphics, and even settlement discussions.

But only if the trial team acts on what it learns.

The value of jury research isn't just discovering what jurors think. It's having enough time to do something about it.

4. Your Opening Statement Becomes a Summary Instead of a Story

When lawyers begin preparing their opening statements too late, there's a predictable temptation.

They start organizing evidence.

First this happened. Then that happened. Then this witness will testify. Then we'll show you this document.

It's chronological. It's thorough. It's legally defensible.

And it may be painfully forgettable.

An effective opening statement does more than preview evidence. It gives jurors a framework for interpreting everything that follows.

It identifies the central conflict, establishes the stakes, and provides a coherent explanation of why the evidence matters.

That requires more than writing.

It requires editing, testing, rehearsing, and sometimes throwing away an approach that initially seemed brilliant.

Those are difficult things to do when the opening statement is still being assembled at midnight before trial.

The best time to discover that your opening doesn't work is not when twelve jurors are watching you deliver it.

5. Your Trial Graphics Become Decoration Instead of Persuasion

This is one of the most common and avoidable consequences of late preparation.

A lawyer calls a litigation graphics consultant and says:

"We need some slides for opening. Trial starts next week."

The consultant asks what the slides should accomplish.

"Well, we have about 150 pages of material we'd like you to turn into PowerPoint."

That's not a graphics strategy.

That's a production assignment.

Good trial graphics aren't merely attractive representations of information. They're tools for helping jurors understand, organize, remember, and sometimes reconsider complicated evidence.

A well-conceived graphic can simplify a technical process, expose a contradiction, establish a timeline, or make an otherwise abstract relationship immediately understandable.

But the most effective graphics often require collaboration, iteration, and careful consideration of the case narrative.

When the assignment arrives at the last minute, there may be time to make the slides look better.

There may not be time to rethink what the slides should be communicating.

The difference between making slides and developing visual persuasion can be enormous.

6. Your Experts Know Everything Except How to Explain It

Expert witnesses can spend years developing extraordinary technical expertise.

Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily make them effective teachers.

An expert who can explain a complex financial model to another economist may have difficulty explaining the same concept to a juror who hasn't taken a mathematics class in twenty years.

The solution isn't simply telling the expert to use smaller words.

It's identifying the essential concepts, developing accessible analogies, anticipating confusion, and rehearsing explanations until they become clear without becoming misleading.

Sometimes that requires visual demonstratives. Sometimes it requires restructuring the testimony. Sometimes it means eliminating fascinating but unnecessary detail.

And sometimes it requires telling an exceptionally accomplished expert something they don't particularly want to hear:

"You're losing the audience."

Those conversations are much easier to have several weeks before trial than several hours before testimony.

7. You Run Out of Time to Simplify

There's a famous observation often attributed to Blaise Pascal: if he'd had more time, he would have written a shorter letter.

Trial preparation has the same problem.

When lawyers are rushed, they tend to include more.

More slides. More exhibits. More explanations. More qualifications. More background.

It's understandable. Eliminating information requires judgment, and judgment takes time.

But jurors don't reward lawyers for presenting the greatest possible quantity of evidence.

They need to understand the evidence that matters.

The process of simplifying a complex case may be among the most intellectually demanding parts of trial preparation.

It requires the confidence to distinguish between information that's important to the legal team and information that's important to the jury.

When time runs out, that distinction often disappears.

And the jury pays the price in cognitive overload.

8. Your Trial Technology Becomes an Unnecessary Source of Anxiety

A trial technician shouldn't first encounter your exhibit database on the morning of opening statements.

Neither should your lead attorney.

Effective courtroom technology requires organization, preparation, testing, and familiarity with the presentation system.

Exhibits need to be properly labeled. Video depositions need to be edited and checked. Demonstratives need to be organized. Equipment needs to be tested. Backup plans need to exist.

And the trial team needs to know how everything will work together.

The goal is for technology to become almost invisible.

Jurors should be concentrating on the evidence, not watching lawyers struggle to find an exhibit or wondering why a video won't play.

The best trial technology support makes the presentation look effortless.

But that apparent effortlessness usually requires considerable preparation.

9. You Lose the Opportunity to Rehearse

Musicians rehearse.

Actors rehearse.

Professional athletes practice relentlessly.

Yet some trial lawyers approach a multimillion-dollar jury trial having never delivered their opening statement aloud from beginning to end.

They've written it. They've edited it. They've thought about it.

But they haven't actually performed it.

And speaking an opening statement is different from reading one.

A sentence that looks elegant on paper may sound unnatural aloud. A transition that seems obvious in a written outline may confuse listeners. A visual that appears perfectly timed may interrupt the speaker's rhythm.

Rehearsal exposes these problems.

It also allows the trial team to evaluate pacing, clarity, movement, transitions, and the relationship between spoken words and visual evidence.

When preparation is compressed into the final few days, rehearsal is often one of the first things sacrificed.

That is a mistake.

10. You Start Making Expensive Decisions Under Pressure

Last-minute trial preparation doesn't necessarily save money.

It can create entirely new categories of expense.

Rush production. Overtime. Emergency travel. Duplicative work. Last-minute changes. Consultants who must rearrange other commitments.

More importantly, compressed schedules reduce the opportunity to make thoughtful decisions.

A graphic that could have been revised several times must be approved immediately.

A witness preparation session that should have taken place over multiple days becomes a single hurried meeting.

A trial strategy that should have been tested is adopted because there's no longer time to explore alternatives.

The cost isn't just financial.

It's the loss of flexibility.

And flexibility is particularly valuable when preparing for something as unpredictable as a jury trial.

11. Your Trial Team Never Becomes a Team

A trial involves more than lawyers.

Depending on the case, it may require jury consultants, litigation graphics specialists, trial technicians, expert witnesses, paralegals, and client representatives.

These people shouldn't be operating as independent departments that meet for the first time during trial.

They should be working toward a shared understanding of the case.

The jury research should inform the opening statement.

The opening statement should inform the graphics.

The graphics should support the witnesses.

The trial technician should understand the presentation strategy.

And the entire team should be prepared to adapt as the trial unfolds.

When everyone is brought together at the last minute, coordination becomes another emergency.

The individual components may be excellent.

But the presentation may still feel disjointed.

12. You Confuse Being Busy With Being Ready

This may be the most dangerous mistake of all.

In the weeks before trial, litigation teams are extraordinarily busy.

Everyone is working late. Emails are flying. Documents are being revised. Conference rooms are full. Meals arrive in cardboard containers.

The atmosphere is intense.

And that intensity can create a comforting illusion: because everyone is working so hard, the team must be getting ready.

But activity isn't the same as progress.

A team can spend an entire weekend perfecting a demonstrative that doesn't advance its central argument.

It can devote hours to a minor evidentiary dispute while neglecting a critical witness.

It can refine the wording of an opening statement without ever asking whether the story is persuasive.

The question isn't how many hours the team is working.

It's whether those hours are making the case more understandable, more credible, and more compelling to the people who will decide it.

What If Your Trial Is Already 30 Days Away?

At this point, some readers are probably thinking:

"This is all very interesting, but my trial starts next month. What am I supposed to do now?"

The answer is not to panic.

It's to prioritize.

Even with a compressed schedule, meaningful improvements may still be possible.

If you have 30 days:

You may still have time to conduct focused jury research, pressure-test your central narrative, identify your most important visual demonstratives, prepare critical witnesses, and develop a coordinated trial presentation plan.

This is also an excellent time to bring outside consultants into the process if the trial team needs specialized support.

If you have 14 days:

The priorities become narrower.

Focus on the opening statement, the most important witnesses, the exhibits and demonstratives that carry your central arguments, and the reliability of your courtroom presentation system.

A limited focus group or targeted feedback exercise may still be possible, depending on the circumstances, but there may be insufficient time for extensive research and revision.

If you have 72 hours:

Forget perfection.

Identify the most serious vulnerabilities in your presentation and address what you realistically can.

Rehearse the opening statement. Verify the critical exhibits. Test the technology. Confirm that the trial team understands its responsibilities.

Simplify wherever possible.

And resist the temptation to introduce elaborate new material that hasn't been adequately reviewed or tested.

At this stage, disciplined execution may be more valuable than ambitious reinvention.

The Best Time to Prepare for Trial Was Months Ago. The Second-Best Time Is Today.

After nearly three decades in litigation consulting, one thing has become abundantly clear to me.

Some trial teams begin thinking about persuasion early.

Others wait until the pressure of an approaching trial forces them to.

The first group has more time to test ideas, identify weaknesses, refine narratives, prepare witnesses, and develop visuals that genuinely advance the case.

The second group often has to make the same decisions under extraordinary time pressure.

That doesn't mean late preparation is doomed. Experienced trial teams can accomplish remarkable things on compressed schedules.

But it does mean that opportunities disappear as the trial date approaches.

You can't recover the time you might have spent testing an alternative narrative.

You can't always repair a witness problem discovered too late.

And you can't assume that a jury will understand a complicated case simply because the lawyers have spent years mastering it.

You've spent years preparing the evidence. Don't wait until the final weeks to prepare the persuasion.

Because when the jury walks into the courtroom, nobody is going to ask how many depositions you took, how many documents you reviewed, or how many hours you billed.

They're going to listen to your story.

And then they're going to decide whether they believe it.

Facing an Approaching Trial Date?

At Persuadius, we help trial teams develop persuasive opening statements, conduct jury research, create litigation graphics, and manage courtroom technology. Our consultants have extensive experience supporting complex litigation, including matters with compressed preparation schedules.

Whether trial is months away or just around the corner, an outside perspective can help identify where preparation efforts will have the greatest impact.

Schedule a free, confidential 15-minute case consultation to discuss your upcoming trial and the support your team may need.

Prefer email? Contact Persuadius confidentially to discuss your case, timing, and requirements.

22 Reasons Not to Use AI to Build Your Trial Slides

ken@persuadius.com (Kenneth J. Lopez, J.D.) — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 13:15:00 GMT

Imagine asking AI to turn your opening statement into a polished presentation. It returns a handsome deck: coordinated colors, matching title bars, tidy lists, and an illustration on every third slide.

You might think you have just eliminated the need for a litigation graphics consultant.

You have generated slides. You have not acquired the expertise that makes trial graphics persuasive.

The hard part of trial graphics is deciding what jurors need to understand, what might keep them from understanding it, and how each visual will help you change that. A finished-looking deck does not answer those questions.

In How Many Persuasion Errors Can You Spot in This Slide?, I deliberately assembled a terrible slide to illustrate familiar presentation mistakes. AI gives us a new reason to revisit that exercise: it can make those same mistakes look much more professional.

My concern is the assumption that familiar presentation conventions must be effective. Common practice is a poor substitute for persuasion expertise. An attorney can ask for a professional-looking deck and receive exactly that, including familiar design choices a litigation graphics specialist would reject. The attorney may even praise the very features that need to change.

The problem is deeper than proofreading the output. To recognize a persuasion error, you first have to understand persuasion. Legal expertise does not automatically supply expertise in visual attention, audience comprehension, or the coordination of graphics and spoken advocacy. Here are 22 reasons that using AI to build your own trial slides is a poor substitute for hiring specialists.

1. AI can make every slide look equally important

The same title bar. The same layout. The same amount of text. A routine background fact and the central contradiction in the case arrive wearing identical clothes. Where is the signal that something important has changed? Consistency should help jurors follow the argument; it should not flatten its emphasis. A litigation graphics specialist designs those moments deliberately. An attorney evaluating the deck for consistency may approve the very sameness that undermines them.

2. AI can eliminate useful visual surprise

A document excerpt followed by a photograph, a comparison, or a single consequential number changes the viewing experience. That change can be purposeful. As I argued in Could Surprise Be One of Your Best Visual Persuasion Tools?, variation belongs in the trial team's toolkit. A deck that treats uniformity as an overriding goal can design those opportunities away. Random decoration is no substitute for a deliberate change in emphasis.

3. AI cannot choose what to downplay without your strategy

Sometimes an unfavorable fact needs to be acknowledged accurately without receiving a dramatic visual reveal. A restrained presentation may be appropriate. But that is a judgment about this case, this audience, and your credibility. If every slide is visually subdued, the presentation may also downplay your strongest evidence. Persuasion expertise is what distinguishes intentional restraint from an accidentally forgettable presentation.

4. AI can turn an opening statement into a slide-shaped outline

Giving AI a speech and asking for slides invites a particular shortcut: divide the speech into sections, summarize each section, and put the summaries on screen. That produces an outline of what the lawyer will say. It does not necessarily produce anything worth showing. Start by asking which relationships, events, or comparisons would become clearer if jurors could see them.

5. AI can bring back the bullet points

A neat list still asks jurors to work through a list. Replacing dots with checkmarks, numbered circles, or little icons does not solve that problem. Our article Powerful PowerPoint Presentation Tips: Ditch the Bullet Points! explains the concern. If the point is that three warnings preceded a decision, show the warnings in relation to that decision. Do not merely announce that there were three.

6. AI can make jurors read while you need them listening

A paragraph on screen gives jurors a reading assignment at the very moment you are speaking. Depending on the content and delivery, those tasks can compete. As discussed in Why Reading Your Litigation PowerPoint Slides Hurts Jurors, the spoken and visual presentations need to work together. Exact wording sometimes matters enormously. Show it deliberately, give jurors time to read, and explain its significance.

7. AI can preserve too much because everything was in the prompt

Uploading a lengthy case summary does not mean every fact deserves screen time. An exhaustive deck can give minor details space that the central explanation needs. Our discussion of how much text is too much remains relevant. Ask what a juror must understand at this point in the presentation. Put supporting detail where it belongs rather than making each slide carry the whole file.

8. AI can compress several reasoning steps into one slide

Consider a slide containing a contract obligation, a notice, a response, and a damages calculation. Each may be accurate. Together, they may require jurors to solve four problems at once. A designer needs to decide what must be understood first and what can follow. Fewer slides do not automatically mean a simpler explanation. Sometimes a sequence gives the audience the necessary room to think.

9. AI can label a subject without explaining its significance

“Internal Communications” identifies a folder. “The warning reached the decision-maker before approval” identifies a proposition, assuming the evidence supports it. AI can generate either kind of headline. Your team must decide which proposition matters and whether the slide actually supports it. A short, concrete heading can guide interpretation; a generic heading can leave jurors wondering why they are seeing the document.

10. AI can add pictures that do no explanatory work

A courthouse, a handshake, or a glowing network may make a slide look finished. Ask what the image helps the jury understand about the evidence. If the answer is nothing, it is occupying space that might be better used for a relationship, a comparison, or no image at all. The standard should be explanatory value, not whether the software found something attractive to fill the rectangle.

11. AI can make a chronology stand in for a story

Sorting events by date does not establish which decision mattered, what alternatives existed, or why the consequences followed. Imagine a dispute involving months of correspondence and one consequential approval. A comprehensive timeline could bury that choice among dozens of routine exchanges. The visual story may need to begin with the decision, then show what the decision-maker knew. A litigation graphics consultant helps make that choice before the timeline is built. Faster production cannot make up for choosing the wrong story structure.

12. AI can explain the case at the wrong starting point

The lawyers may have lived with the dispute for years. Jurors have not. An AI prompt written in the team's shorthand can produce slides that preserve its assumptions: unexplained acronyms, unfamiliar processes, and distinctions that seem obvious only to specialists. In 5 Rules for How Simple a Trial Presentation Should Be, I urged teams to simplify further than feels comfortable. Begin with the audience's knowledge, not the team's vocabulary.

13. AI can confuse an accurate number with a meaningful number

Ten million transactions. Forty milliseconds. Three parts per million. A number can be correct and still leave a juror with no useful understanding of its scale or significance. A trial graphics professional asks what comparison would help and whether that comparison is fair. Asking AI to “make this statistic impressive” starts with the wrong objective. Ask what the audience needs to understand about it.

14. AI can make a chart persuasive in the wrong way

Check the axis, denominator, time period, unit, and comparison group. A beautifully drawn chart can exaggerate a difference or conceal one through those choices. The issue is not whether it looks mathematically sophisticated. It is whether it faithfully represents the underlying data and the proposition you intend to establish. Verification must reach the visual construction, not stop at checking that the numbers were copied correctly.

15. AI can turn uncertainty into a definite-looking picture

Suppose the evidence establishes a range of possible locations. A generated illustration places an object at one exact point. The image now communicates more certainty than the source supports. The same problem arises with distances, angles, timing, and sequences. Every depicted detail needs scrutiny. Visual precision is a claim, even when nobody has written that claim in the caption.

16. AI can improve the wording and change the evidence

An AI-generated summary may be clearer than the underlying email while losing a qualification that matters. “Could” is not “would.” A question is not an admission. Keep exact quotations distinct from summaries, check them against the source, and preserve the context needed to understand them. A polished paraphrase should never quietly become the document the jury thinks it is reading.

17. AI can create a document callout without a reading path

Enlarging an excerpt is only one design decision. How will jurors recognize the source? Where should they look first? How much surrounding language is necessary? Does the highlight isolate the relevant wording without changing its meaning? A crowded screenshot with a colored box is not automatically a useful callout. The design should guide the audience through the evidence without making it hunt for the point.

18. AI cannot verify courtroom readability from a laptop preview

Small labels, low contrast, and subtle color differences may look acceptable on the designer's screen. The courtroom is the real test. Check the display, viewing distance, and sightlines; avoid making color alone carry an essential distinction. No universal font-size rule can substitute for checking what the audience will actually see. An exported deck is a file, not proof that the jury can read it.

19. AI can fill moments that should belong to the lawyer

Some passages call for a visual. Others call for the jury to look directly at the person speaking. A deck built to accompany every paragraph can leave an irrelevant image on screen or encourage unnecessary slide changes. Our article 12 Ways to SUCCESSFULLY Combine Oral and Visual Presentations discusses coordinating those choices. Plan the pauses and blank screens along with the graphics.

20. AI cannot replace audience testing with its own approval

Ask AI whether its slide is compelling, and you receive another model response. You have not learned what a juror understood. Show the visual to people unfamiliar with the case and ask them to explain it back. Where appropriate, test it through jury research. Their misunderstanding may reveal that the problem lies in the explanation itself, even when the slide looks excellent.

21. AI can leave you with a deck that is awkward to change

Trial preparation rarely ends with the first export. A ruling, revised calculation, or changed testimony may require a rapid correction. Can the team edit the text, replace the exhibit, remove a section, and verify the result? A slide assembled as a single image may complicate those tasks. Inspect the actual deliverable and rehearse the revision workflow before relying on it in court.

22. AI can make unfinished strategic work feel finished

Polish creates a powerful stopping point. Once the deck looks ready, the team may shift from asking whether the argument works to debating a color or a word. In Why Lawyers Should Stop Designing Their Own PowerPoint Slides, I described the expertise courtroom graphics require. AI does not remove that requirement. It makes it easier to obtain a finished-looking product before the underlying decisions have been tested.

You are hiring the expertise that tells you what to build

The temptation is understandable. If you think a litigation graphics consultant's job is to turn your outline into attractive slides, AI looks like a replacement. But that description leaves out the most valuable part of the work.

At Persuadius, the work includes questioning the outline, identifying what the audience needs explained, choosing how to make a relationship visible, and deciding when a visual should command attention. Our litigation graphics work draws on legal understanding, design, and jury consulting. Those decisions shape what gets built in the first place.

An attorney reviewing AI-generated slides can check names, dates, and quotations and still miss the central persuasion problem. The slide may be accurate, attractive, and strategically ineffective. Asking the same tool to improve it does not supply the expertise needed to diagnose why.

Specialists may use AI as one tool in their work. That does not make their expertise available to everyone who uses the same software. Owning the tool and knowing what to do with it are separate capabilities.

Before replacing professional trial graphics with an AI-generated deck, ask what you are actually saving. Production time is only one part of the investment. The quality of the explanation you put before the jury is the part that matters.

If you are preparing for trial, contact Persuadius for a free 15-minute case consultation about your litigation graphics and presentation strategy. Prefer a confidential conversation? Email confidential@persuadius.com.

Persuadius’ Top 10 Most-Read Articles of 2026—So Far

ken@persuadius.com (Kenneth J. Lopez, J.D.) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 13:30:00 GMT

Trial preparation has a way of turning capable lawyers into reluctant experts in everything. One minute you are refining a cross-examination. The next, you are moving text boxes around a slide, troubleshooting a video, or trying to turn three years of discovery into an opening statement someone can follow in thirty minutes.

Several of our most-read articles this year ask whether all of that belongs on the trial lawyer’s desk.

Others tackle an equally demanding problem: what happens inside a juror’s head when the presentation begins? How do you hold attention, challenge an early assumption, or help someone understand why one event led to another?

10. Simplifying Your Opening Statement to Its Core

You know the case. Can a juror explain it after hearing your opening?

Part two of our Persuasion Occasion podcast series with Perkins Coie examines the work of reducing an opening statement to its essential story. It asks lawyers to think about what jurors will understand, retain, and eventually repeat. For a trial team staring at an overgrown draft, this is a useful starting point: identify the central idea before deciding which details deserve to stay.

9. The Simplest Storytelling Trick for Persuasion Might Have Come from South Park

An unlikely source offers a remarkably practical editing test. Look at the transitions between the major events in your opening. Do they amount to “and then,” or can you connect them with “but” and “therefore”?

This article explores how conflict and consequence give a story momentum. It is especially useful when an opening contains all the necessary facts but still feels like a recitation. Try the test on one page of your outline and see where the connections need work.

8. How to Break Juror Confirmation Bias (Using a Surprisingly Simple Trick)

What might make a juror pause before fitting the next fact into an opinion already formed?

Part three of our Perkins Coie podcast series explores the possibility of using a carefully chosen visual surprise or moment of difficulty to encourage closer attention. The article presents this as a technique to consider selectively; it also acknowledges the potential for distraction. Its most useful question is whether your presentation invites jurors to examine an assumption they might otherwise leave untouched.

7. Humor, Demonstrative Evidence, and the “Monster of Evidence”

Every additional exhibit has an advocate inside the trial team. Someone remembers why it matters. Someone worries about leaving it out. Eventually, the presentation becomes a creature with hundreds of attachments and very little room to breathe.

This article considers the cost of that accumulation and explores how appropriate humor and memorable demonstratives can help address audience fatigue. It is a useful read when your team’s answer to every presentation problem has become another document, another chart, or another slide.

6. Why Attorneys Should Not Run Their Own Trial Technology

A lawyer questioning a witness already has plenty to monitor. Adding exhibit retrieval, video playback, and screen management creates another set of demands at precisely the moment attention matters most.

This article makes the case for experienced trial technicians and hotseaters. It examines how dedicated courtroom technology support helps attorneys maintain their focus and the presentation’s rhythm. For teams making staffing decisions, it offers a practical way to think about what the person at counsel table should be concentrating on.

5. Why Fear Beats Logic in the Courtroom: Insights from a Perkins Coie Podcast (Part 1)

An argument can be carefully reasoned and still leave an audience unconvinced.

The first article in our Perkins Coie podcast series explores the role of fear and perceived risk in courtroom persuasion. It asks trial lawyers to consider the concerns jurors bring to the evidence and how those concerns may shape its meaning. The practical challenge is to build a presentation that addresses the audience’s underlying questions as well as the trial team’s factual points.

4. Why Trial Lawyers Should Consider Outsourcing Their Opening Statements

Knowing a case intimately can make it difficult to hear it for the first time.

This article explores how an outside collaborator can help expose unexplained assumptions, strengthen narrative structure, and connect an opening statement with its visuals. The lawyer’s voice and judgment remain central throughout drafting, testing, and rehearsal. Published on September 3, this piece reached fourth place by September 23—a striking position for the newest article in the countdown.

3. Why Lawyers Should Stop Designing Their Own PowerPoint Slides

PowerPoint makes it easy to put information on a screen. Deciding what belongs there takes a different kind of work.

This article examines the time and attention lawyers invest in making their own slides, along with the communication problems that can survive all that effort. It explains the value of litigation graphics designed around what the audience needs to understand at each moment. Read it before assigning another associate a weekend of aligning boxes and shrinking type.

2. Why Bullet Points Are Killing Your Persuasion: Lessons from Our Conversation with Perkins Coie

The familiar bullet-point slide gets another hard look in this installment of our Perkins Coie conversation.

The article examines how text-heavy presentation habits can interfere with the work of persuading a jury. It focuses on the relationship between spoken explanation, trial graphics, and attention. For anyone revising an opening presentation, it raises a useful question: what should jurors see while they listen to this part of the story?

1. OnCue vs. TrialDirector: How One Trial-Presentation Platform Took Over (and the Other Quietly Vanished)

Our most-read new article of 2026 so far examines trial-presentation software from the perspective of the people operating it under courtroom pressure.

Drawing on reports from our trial technicians, I discuss their preference for OnCue and the importance they place on speed, stability, workflow, and video handling. This is a firsthand account of our team’s experience and preferences. For lawyers evaluating trial technology support, it provides a useful introduction to the operational details that matter when the next exhibit needs to appear immediately.

One Series Worth Reading Together

The articles about designing slides, running trial technology, and developing opening statements all finished in the top six.

Read together, they invite a practical review of how your team allocates its time. Which tasks need the trial lawyer’s direct attention? Which would benefit from a specialist? Where would an outside perspective reveal something the team has stopped noticing?

Those questions belong early in trial preparation, while there is still time to act on the answers.

Put One Idea to Work Before Your Next Trial

Choose one presentation you are developing now. Review its opening for a clear central story. Examine the transitions for cause and consequence. Look at the slides from the perspective of someone encountering the case for the first time. Decide who will manage the technology when you need to concentrate on the courtroom.

Our work at Persuadius brings together jury consulting, litigation graphics, trial technicians, and opening statement support to help trial teams make those decisions and carry them through.

Schedule a free 15-minute case consultation to discuss your upcoming trial.
Prefer a confidential email conversation? Contact us at confidential@persuadius.com.

Why Trial Lawyers Should Consider Outsourcing Their Opening Statements

ken@persuadius.com (Kenneth J. Lopez, J.D.) — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 13:45:00 GMT

There are certain parts of a trial that lawyers instinctively believe they should do themselves.

Writing the opening statement is near the top of the list.

I understand why.

The first chair knows the case.

The first chair knows the witnesses.

The first chair has lived with the documents, depositions, expert reports, motions, bad facts, good facts, and opposing counsel—sometimes for years.

So when trial approaches, it seems perfectly natural for that lawyer to sit down and write the opening statement.

But I would ask a different question:

Does knowing the case better than anyone else necessarily make you the best person to decide how someone hearing the case for the first time should hear it?

Those are not quite the same skill.

In two recent articles, I argued that lawyers should generally stop designing their own PowerPoint slides and stop running their own courtroom technology.

My reasoning was not that lawyers are incapable of either task.

Of course they are capable.

My point was that highly specialized work should often be performed by people who specialize in it—particularly when millions or billions of dollars may be riding on the result.

I think the same principle applies to opening statements.

Trial lawyers should at least consider getting outside help drafting them.

Not because the trial lawyer should surrender control.

Quite the opposite.

The right collaboration can give the lawyer a clearer, simpler, more persuasive version of the case to make entirely his or her own.

Nobody Is Suggesting That Someone Else Should Give Your Opening

Let's dispose of the biggest objection immediately.

I am not suggesting that a consultant should write an opening statement, hand it to a trial lawyer the night before trial, and say:

“Here. Memorize this.”

That would be terrible.

The opening statement has to sound like the lawyer giving it.

The language has to feel natural.

The themes have to be believable coming from that particular advocate.

The lawyer has to understand why every section is there, where every transition is going, why certain facts are emphasized, why others are omitted, and how the opening fits into the larger trial strategy.

The lawyer must own it.

But owning an opening statement and drafting every sentence of it yourself are two entirely different things.

That distinction matters.

Great speeches are routinely collaborative.

Great books have editors.

Great CEOs have communications professionals.

Great filmmakers have screenwriters, editors, cinematographers, and producers.

The person delivering the message remains responsible for the message.

But sophisticated communicators understand that outside expertise can make the final product considerably better.

Why should a major trial be different?

I Have Been Doing This Collaboratively for Decades

In 21 Secrets From an Opening Statement Guru, I described how opening statement development has worked throughout much of my career.

Sometimes the first-chair lawyer does 80 percent of the drafting and I or others contribute 20 percent.

Sometimes those percentages are reversed.

Sometimes we begin with a nearly complete opening.

Sometimes we begin with thousands of pages of case materials and a conversation about what the case is really about.

But the process is almost always collaborative.

And I think that is precisely why it works.

The lawyer brings something the consultant cannot possibly replicate: intimate knowledge of the case, legal judgment, courtroom instincts, knowledge of the judge, relationships with the witnesses, and personal credibility.

An experienced litigation consultant brings something different: perspective.

That difference is enormously valuable.

You May Know Too Much About Your Case

One of the great paradoxes of trial preparation is that expertise can become an obstacle to communication.

You have lived with the case for three years.

The jury has not.

You know that “the March 14 email” matters because you have seen it 200 times.

The jurors have never heard of the sender.

You understand why Exhibit 437 changes the meaning of Exhibit 212.

The jurors do not yet know what either exhibit is.

You know which of the twelve disputed contract provisions actually matters.

The jury does not yet understand the contract.

This is the curse of knowledge in action.

Once we understand something deeply, it becomes surprisingly difficult to remember what it was like not to understand it.

That creates a dangerous tendency in opening statements.

Lawyers explain what matters to lawyers who already know the case.

They do not always explain what matters to people encountering the case for the first time.

An outsider can keep asking the questions the jury will silently ask:

Who is this person?

Why should I care?

Why are you telling me this?

What does this document prove?

What is this case actually about?

Who did something wrong?

What should have happened instead?

Why does this matter?

Those questions can feel almost insultingly basic after years of litigation.

They are not.

They are the questions on which persuasion depends.

Great Opening Statements Are Usually the Product of Subtraction

One of the most difficult things we do with trial teams is simplify.

Lawyers tend to believe that important facts deserve inclusion.

That sounds logical.

Unfortunately, there may be 600 important facts.

A jury cannot absorb 600 important facts in an opening statement.

So somebody has to decide what survives.

That is why I have repeatedly emphasized one principle in our opening-statement work:

Simplify. Simplify. Simplify.

The best trial lawyers I have worked with understand this instinctively.

They do not demonstrate mastery by telling jurors everything they know.

They demonstrate mastery by deciding what jurors actually need to know.

The opening statement is not the trial.

It is the framework through which the jury will understand the trial.

And frameworks work because they leave things out.

An experienced outside consultant has one tremendous advantage here:

We are less emotionally attached to the material.

We did not take the deposition.

We did not spend three weeks fighting over the document request.

We did not write the summary judgment brief.

We do not care that an issue was incredibly difficult to litigate.

We care whether it advances the story.

That makes subtraction easier.

Lawyers Often Confuse Chronology With Storytelling

There is another pattern I see repeatedly.

A lawyer knows the chronology exceptionally well.

So the opening becomes:

This happened.

And then this happened.

And then they sent this email.

And then there was a meeting.

And then the contract was amended.

And then somebody complained.

And then litigation began.

Everything may be completely accurate.

And completely forgettable.

As I recently wrote in The Simplest Storytelling Trick for Persuasion Might Have Come from South Park, one useful test is whether the major parts of the opening are connected primarily by “and then.”

If they are, you probably have a chronology.

Not yet a story.

Stories are built around conflict and consequence:

But.

Therefore.

The company promised X, but internally it knew Y.

Therefore, management faced a choice.

Management chose Z, but concealed what had happened.

Therefore, the consequences became unavoidable.

Now the facts have direction.

A skilled opening-statement consultant should be looking for exactly those connections.

Not simply:

“What happened next?”

But:

“Why did what happened next matter?”

That is where chronology begins turning into persuasion.

Your Opening Statement Should Be Written for Jurors, Not Lawyers

Lawyers are trained to qualify.

To distinguish.

To hedge.

To anticipate exceptions.

To define.

To footnote.

To preserve arguments.

These are enormously valuable legal skills.

They can produce terrible oral communication.

A brief might say:

“The evidence is expected to demonstrate that, notwithstanding Defendant's representations concerning its compliance program, senior management possessed contemporaneous information tending to establish that certain procedures had not been implemented consistently across all relevant operating units.”

That may survive partner review.

Nobody talks that way.

Especially not to jurors.

An opening statement might instead say:

“They told everyone the safety system was working. Their own documents show they knew it wasn't.”

Same case.

Different communication.

Outside drafting support can be particularly valuable because somebody has permission to say:

I know that sentence is legally precise.

But nobody will remember it.

Let's say what you actually mean.

The Economics May Make Sense Too

There is a strange assumption inside some law firms that drafting an opening internally is free.

It isn't.

Suppose a partner and several associates spend dozens or even hundreds of hours drafting, reorganizing, rewriting, editing, and building the opening.

Those are extremely expensive hours.

More importantly, they are finite hours.

Every hour spent rewriting the fourth version of the introductory chronology is an hour that cannot be spent preparing the CEO.

Or refining cross-examination.

Or anticipating evidentiary disputes.

Or preparing for the judge's likely questions.

Or learning the weaknesses in the opponent's expert testimony.

This is essentially the same economic argument I made when discussing lawyers designing PowerPoint presentations.

The question is not:

Can the lawyer do this?

The lawyer almost certainly can.

The better question is:

Is this the highest-value use of that lawyer's time, and will doing it entirely in-house produce the best result?

Sometimes the answer will be yes.

Frequently, I think the answer is no.

Outside Drafting Creates Something Every Trial Team Needs: A Fresh Set of Eyes

There is another reason I like involving someone who has not lived with the case.

Surprise.

After thousands of hours of discovery, the trial team stops being surprised by the case.

That is dangerous.

Jurors are going to be surprised by it.

An outsider may read one email and say:

“Wait. He knew about this before the meeting?”

Everybody on the trial team responds:

“Yes, of course.”

Stop.

That reaction matters.

The outsider just experienced something much closer to what a juror may experience.

That moment may belong in the opening.

Or an outsider may ask:

“Why didn't your client just terminate the agreement?”

Everyone around the conference table knows the answer.

Wonderful.

The jury won't.

Put the answer in the opening.

Fresh eyes expose assumptions.

Assumptions left unexplained become openings for opposing counsel.

Outsourcing Also Makes Testing Easier

I do not believe important opening statements should emerge fully formed three days before trial.

They should evolve.

Draft.

Present.

Cut.

Reorganize.

Test.

Rewrite.

Rehearse.

And, when the stakes justify it, test the competing stories with mock jurors.

We have written previously about using mock trials to develop opening statements because mock jurors often reveal something the trial team simply cannot see from inside the case.

The theme everyone loves may fall flat.

The fact everyone thought was devastating may barely register.

A supposedly minor bad fact may dominate deliberations.

The explanation that seems obvious may confuse everyone.

Or a phrase someone almost deleted becomes the language mock jurors repeat to one another during deliberations.

That feedback is gold.

And it reinforces a larger point:

An opening statement should be developed, not merely written.

AI Makes This Argument More Important, Not Less

There is an obvious new player in opening-statement drafting.

Artificial intelligence.

AI can summarize testimony.

It can reorganize facts.

It can propose themes.

It can produce twenty different introductions before lunch.

Those capabilities are useful.

But generating language is not the same thing as developing a persuasion strategy.

AI does not sit behind a one-way mirror watching a mock jury misunderstand your favorite argument.

It does not notice the subtle expression on a juror's face when your client is described a certain way.

It does not have decades of accumulated courtroom experience watching which lawyers connect and which lawyers lose the room.

And most importantly, AI does not know which version sounds authentically like you unless a human trial team shapes it carefully.

I expect AI to become an increasingly valuable tool in opening-statement development.

But I see it as another tool.

Not the strategist.

The Trial Lawyer Should Still Be the Author in the Most Important Sense

By the time opening statement begins, something interesting should have happened.

The consultant's words should have disappeared.

So should the associate's words.

So should the partner's edits.

There should only be the lawyer and the story.

The lawyer should know where it is going.

The lawyer should understand why each piece is there.

The lawyer should be able to depart from the exact wording without losing the structure.

The lawyer should be able to look at the jury instead of reading.

The opening should feel so natural that nobody could identify which sentence originated with whom.

That is successful collaboration.

The goal of outsourcing opening-statement drafting is not to make the lawyer less important.

It is to free the lawyer to concentrate on the part nobody else can outsource:

Being the advocate.

Lawyers Should Not Have to Do Everything Themselves

There is a larger theme running through these last several articles.

Trial lawyers do extraordinarily difficult work.

Their highest-value contribution is judgment.

Strategy.

Examination.

Credibility.

Connection.

Persuasion.

They do not also need to be graphic designers.

They do not also need to be courtroom technicians.

And they do not necessarily need to stare at a blank Microsoft Word document and personally manufacture every sentence of an opening statement from scratch.

Sometimes the best thing a trial lawyer can do is bring specialists into the room.

Let the graphic designer help visualize the case.

Let the trial technician run the technology.

Let experienced persuasion and storytelling professionals help develop the opening.

Then rehearse it.

Challenge it.

Rewrite it.

Test it.

Make it yours.

And when the judge turns to you and says:

“Counsel, you may proceed.”

Stand up.

Look at the jury.

And tell them the story.

Need Help With an Opening Statement?

Persuadius works collaboratively with trial teams to develop, draft, rewrite, test, and refine opening statements for high-stakes litigation.

We can begin with your existing draft, an outline, or the case materials themselves. The objective is not to replace the trial lawyer's voice. It is to help make that voice as clear, credible, memorable, and persuasive as possible.

Schedule a free 15-minute case consultation to discuss your opening statement and trial strategy.

Or, if confidentiality and conflicts are your first concern, submit a confidential conflict check before sharing case details.

Why Attorneys Should Not Run Their Own Trial Technology

ken@persuadius.com (Kenneth J. Lopez, J.D.) — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:15:00 GMT

There is a particular moment in trial that I have seen far too many times.

A lawyer is standing in front of the jury. The lawyer is prepared. The question is good. The witness has just given exactly the answer everyone hoped for.

Now the lawyer wants Exhibit 237 on the screen.

And suddenly the trial stops.

The lawyer turns toward the laptop.

Clicks something.

Nothing happens.

Clicks again.

The wrong document appears.

Someone at counsel table whispers something.

The lawyer looks back at the screen.

The jury looks at the lawyer.

And a moment that should have been about the evidence has become a moment about the technology.

This is almost entirely preventable.

Just as I recently argued in Why Lawyers Should Stop Designing Their Own PowerPoint Slides, lawyers should generally not be spending their time designing their own courtroom graphics.

I would take that principle one step further:

Trial lawyers should not be running their own trial technology either.

Not because lawyers cannot learn the technology.

Of course they can.

The question is why they would want to divide their attention between two completely different jobs at precisely the moment when their powers of persuasion matter most.

The Trial Lawyer Has One Job: Persuade

Trial is cognitively demanding.

During an examination, a good trial lawyer is simultaneously monitoring the witness, listening for nuances in the answer, watching the judge, anticipating objections, thinking several questions ahead, assessing the jury's reaction, remembering the evidentiary record, and deciding whether the original examination plan should change.

That is quite enough.

Now add:

Where is the exhibit?

Which window is active?

Did the video load?

Why is the document appearing on the attorney monitor but not the jury monitor?

Which button produces the callout?

Did I accidentally advance the PowerPoint?

Can I get back to the previous slide?

Where is the impeachment clip?

Why isn't the audio playing?

The problem is not simply that technology can malfunction.

The larger problem is that operating technology consumes attention that should be directed toward advocacy.

A professional trial technician—sometimes called a hot-seater—removes that cognitive burden.

The lawyer thinks about the witness.

The trial tech thinks about the screen.

That division of labor is enormously valuable.

Relinquish the Clicker. Really.

I made essentially the same argument years ago in Trial Lawyers, Relinquish the Clicker.

The clicker looks harmless.

It isn't.

I have watched excellent lawyers accidentally jump ahead in their presentations, struggle to return to the correct slide, lose their place, become frustrated, and eventually abandon portions of presentations they had spent weeks preparing.

And the technology problem rarely stays a technology problem.

The lawyer gets flustered.

That changes body language.

The pace changes.

Eye contact disappears.

The lawyer begins looking toward the screen or laptop rather than toward the judge or jury.

Momentum disappears.

The audience notices.

That is why giving up the clicker actually produces more control, not less.

A lawyer who has rehearsed properly with a trial technician can simply speak.

The exhibit appears.

The photograph enlarges.

The key sentence highlights.

The deposition clip plays.

The timeline advances.

The lawyer does not visibly command any of it.

To the jury, the visual presentation simply seems to follow the lawyer's thoughts.

When it is done well, it can look effortless.

Of course, it isn't effortless at all.

It is rehearsed.

Great Trial Technology Should Be Almost Invisible

Some lawyers worry that using a sophisticated trial technician makes a presentation look overly produced.

In my experience, the opposite is usually true.

Badly operated technology calls attention to itself.

Great trial technology disappears.

The jury should not be thinking:

"Wow, they have an impressive computer system."

They should be thinking:

"I understand what happened."

The best trial technician operates almost like an invisible member of the advocacy team.

As we explained in What a Great "Hot Seat Operator" Can Add to a Trial Team, an experienced technician contributes much more than computer skills.

The best trial technicians spend enormous amounts of time in courtrooms. They see what works. They see what fails. They see what irritates judges. They understand courtroom rhythm. They learn how different lawyers communicate. And they become extraordinarily good at anticipating what is likely to happen next.

When the relationship between lawyer and trial technician is working properly, the technician may be pulling up the next exhibit before the lawyer has finished asking for it.

That is not technology support.

That is teamwork.

TrialDirector Was Once State-of-the-Art. Trial Technology Has Moved On.

There is an important update to some of our older writing about trial technology.

In 2012, we published 5 Tips for Using TrialDirector and Trial Technicians Effectively.

At the time, we described inData's TrialDirector as state-of-the-art trial presentation software.

And at the time, it was.

But 2012 might as well be another technological era.

Today, Persuadius trial technicians overwhelmingly prefer OnCue for modern courtroom presentation. In a more recent article, OnCue vs. TrialDirector: How One Trial-Presentation Platform Took Over, I discussed why our technicians have moved so decisively toward OnCue.

TrialDirector is still commercially available, so it would be inaccurate to say the software literally no longer exists. But within our own trial technology practice, OnCue has become the preferred modern platform. Reveal continues to market TrialDirector, while OnCue continues actively releasing and supporting its current courtroom presentation software.

But here is the important point:

The software itself is not the competitive advantage.

The person operating it is.

Giving OnCue to someone who occasionally presents exhibits is not the same thing as putting an experienced trial technician in the hot seat.

It is like handing someone a professional camera and calling them a cinematographer.

Tools matter.

Mastery matters much more.

Trial Is a Terrible Place to Learn Technology

One of the mistakes we identified years ago in The 14 Most Preventable Trial Preparation Mistakes was asking associates or paralegals without sufficient trial-presentation experience to serve as trial technicians.

We described a case in which a trial team had insufficiently experienced personnel running the presentation and the courtroom sat waiting for roughly ten minutes during opening statements while the technology problem was addressed.

Ten minutes may not sound like much.

Try standing silently in front of twelve jurors for ten minutes while your opening statement has stopped.

It feels like an eternity.

And it creates an impression.

Prepared versus unprepared.

Organized versus disorganized.

Confident versus rattled.

Professional versus amateur.

Jurors may not understand what caused the technical failure.

They don't need to.

They experience the failure.

Trial presentation is performance, and timing is part of persuasion.

A Trial Technician Does Things a Lawyer Shouldn't Be Thinking About

Modern courtroom technology involves much more than advancing a PowerPoint.

A trial technician may be responsible for displaying and enlarging exhibits, highlighting portions of documents, creating document callouts on the fly, coordinating multiple monitors, playing synchronized deposition testimony, moving instantly among exhibits, handling audio and video, preparing impeachment material, coordinating with courtroom personnel, troubleshooting connections, maintaining redundant systems, tracking changes to demonstratives, and adapting when the judge suddenly rules that something can—or cannot—be shown.

OnCue can make many of these tasks remarkably fast in the hands of someone who knows it well. The software is specifically designed around presenting case evidence, deposition clips, documents, annotations, and other trial materials.

But the operative phrase is "in the hands of someone who knows it well."

The trial technician may perform these operations hundreds or thousands of times.

The lawyer may conduct a trial every few years.

Who should be pressing the buttons?

The answer seems obvious.

The Economics of DIY Trial Technology Don't Make Much Sense Either

There is also a financial argument.

In last month's PowerPoint article, I pointed out the strange economics of having expensive lawyers perform graphic-design work.

The same logic applies here.

Imagine an associate billing hundreds of dollars per hour spending dozens of hours building trial databases, troubleshooting video formats, preparing deposition clips, configuring courtroom equipment, learning software shortcuts, and rehearsing technical workflows.

Perhaps the associate can do all of those things.

But is that the highest-value use of the associate's time?

Probably not.

Those hours could instead be spent preparing witnesses, studying testimony, improving examination outlines, anticipating evidentiary problems, developing themes, preparing impeachment, or refining the story of the case.

That is legal work.

Trial technology is a specialized discipline.

Using specialists is not an indulgence when the stakes are high.

Frequently, it is simply efficient allocation of resources.

Good Trial Technicians Also Handle the Unexpected

This may be their greatest value.

Trials do not follow scripts.

A witness unexpectedly denies something.

Opposing counsel opens a door.

The judge changes a ruling.

A lawyer suddenly wants an exhibit that nobody expected to use until Thursday.

A deposition clip becomes relevant that nobody planned to play.

The lawyer says:

"Pull up the March 14 email."

A strong trial technician does not say:

"Give me five minutes."

The technician finds it.

Displays it.

Highlights it.

And the examination continues.

That responsiveness can dramatically change the rhythm of a cross-examination.

The evidence appears while the point is alive.

The jury sees the contradiction immediately.

The lawyer retains momentum.

There is an enormous difference between eventually showing something and showing it at exactly the moment it matters.

Technology Problems Become Credibility Problems

Lawyers sometimes describe trial technology failures as inconveniences.

I think that understates the problem.

Courtroom presentation communicates preparation.

If one side repeatedly struggles to display exhibits, searches for files, apologizes for technical problems, turns toward the laptop, or asks the jury to wait, people begin forming impressions.

Maybe consciously.

Maybe unconsciously.

By contrast, when evidence appears instantly and naturally, the trial team looks organized and in command of the case.

That does not mean a slick presentation wins a weak case.

It doesn't.

But poor execution can absolutely interfere with the presentation of a strong one.

Technology should amplify credibility, not consume it.

The Best Trial Lawyer Should Look Like Nothing Else Exists

Watch an exceptional trial lawyer supported by an exceptional trial technician.

The lawyer is looking at the witness.

Or the jury.

Or the judge.

Not the laptop.

Not the projector.

Not the clicker.

An exhibit suddenly appears.

The lawyer continues speaking.

A critical paragraph enlarges.

The lawyer continues speaking.

A photograph replaces it.

The lawyer continues speaking.

A deposition clip plays.

Then the screen goes dark because the visual has served its purpose and the jury's attention should return to the lawyer.

That coordination is extremely difficult to reproduce while simultaneously conducting the examination and operating the computer yourself.

And why would you try?

The lawyer should be doing the thing the lawyer uniquely knows how to do:

persuade.

Everything else should support that objective.

Lawyers Should Practice Law. Trial Technicians Should Run Trial Technology.

My argument here is essentially the same one I made about lawyers designing their own PowerPoint presentations.

Knowing the technology is good.

Understanding what is possible is essential.

Being able to communicate intelligently with your trial technician is valuable.

But understanding a tool and personally operating that tool during the most important moments of a multimillion-dollar trial are entirely different things.

If your client has millions—or billions—of dollars at stake, ask yourself a simple question:

Do you really want your first-chair lawyer thinking about which button to press?

I don't.

I want that lawyer thinking about the next question.

The next objection.

The witness.

The jury.

The story.

And ultimately, winning the case.

Let somebody else run the technology.

Need Trial Technology Support for an Upcoming Trial?

Persuadius provides experienced trial technicians and hot-seat operators for trials, hearings, and arbitrations nationwide. We can also integrate trial technology with litigation graphics, jury consulting, and opening-statement support so that your courtroom presentation operates as one coordinated persuasion strategy.

Book a free 15-minute case consultation to discuss your upcoming trial and the right courtroom technology team for it.

For matters requiring discretion, you can also contact Persuadius directly for a confidential conflict check.

The Litigation Consulting Report

12 Costly Mistakes Lawyers Make When Preparing for Trial Too Late

1. Discovery Is Not Trial Preparation

2. Your Trial Story Shouldn't Be the Last Thing You Develop

3. You Discover Your Case's Biggest Weakness When It's Too Late to Fix It

4. Your Opening Statement Becomes a Summary Instead of a Story

5. Your Trial Graphics Become Decoration Instead of Persuasion

6. Your Experts Know Everything Except How to Explain It

7. You Run Out of Time to Simplify

8. Your Trial Technology Becomes an Unnecessary Source of Anxiety

9. You Lose the Opportunity to Rehearse

10. You Start Making Expensive Decisions Under Pressure

11. Your Trial Team Never Becomes a Team

12. You Confuse Being Busy With Being Ready

What If Your Trial Is Already 30 Days Away?

The Best Time to Prepare for Trial Was Months Ago. The Second-Best Time Is Today.

Facing an Approaching Trial Date?

22 Reasons Not to Use AI to Build Your Trial Slides

1. AI can make every slide look equally important

2. AI can eliminate useful visual surprise

3. AI cannot choose what to downplay without your strategy

4. AI can turn an opening statement into a slide-shaped outline

5. AI can bring back the bullet points

6. AI can make jurors read while you need them listening

7. AI can preserve too much because everything was in the prompt

8. AI can compress several reasoning steps into one slide

9. AI can label a subject without explaining its significance

10. AI can add pictures that do no explanatory work

11. AI can make a chronology stand in for a story

12. AI can explain the case at the wrong starting point

13. AI can confuse an accurate number with a meaningful number

14. AI can make a chart persuasive in the wrong way

15. AI can turn uncertainty into a definite-looking picture

16. AI can improve the wording and change the evidence

17. AI can create a document callout without a reading path

18. AI cannot verify courtroom readability from a laptop preview

19. AI can fill moments that should belong to the lawyer

20. AI cannot replace audience testing with its own approval

21. AI can leave you with a deck that is awkward to change

22. AI can make unfinished strategic work feel finished

You are hiring the expertise that tells you what to build

Persuadius’ Top 10 Most-Read Articles of 2026—So Far

10. Simplifying Your Opening Statement to Its Core

9. The Simplest Storytelling Trick for Persuasion Might Have Come from South Park

8. How to Break Juror Confirmation Bias (Using a Surprisingly Simple Trick)

7. Humor, Demonstrative Evidence, and the “Monster of Evidence”

6. Why Attorneys Should Not Run Their Own Trial Technology

5. Why Fear Beats Logic in the Courtroom: Insights from a Perkins Coie Podcast (Part 1)

4. Why Trial Lawyers Should Consider Outsourcing Their Opening Statements

3. Why Lawyers Should Stop Designing Their Own PowerPoint Slides

2. Why Bullet Points Are Killing Your Persuasion: Lessons from Our Conversation with Perkins Coie

1. OnCue vs. TrialDirector: How One Trial-Presentation Platform Took Over (and the Other Quietly Vanished)

One Series Worth Reading Together

Put One Idea to Work Before Your Next Trial

Related Articles and Resources

Why Trial Lawyers Should Consider Outsourcing Their Opening Statements

Nobody Is Suggesting That Someone Else Should Give Your Opening

I Have Been Doing This Collaboratively for Decades

You May Know Too Much About Your Case

Great Opening Statements Are Usually the Product of Subtraction

Lawyers Often Confuse Chronology With Storytelling

Your Opening Statement Should Be Written for Jurors, Not Lawyers

The Economics May Make Sense Too

Outside Drafting Creates Something Every Trial Team Needs: A Fresh Set of Eyes

Outsourcing Also Makes Testing Easier

AI Makes This Argument More Important, Not Less

The Trial Lawyer Should Still Be the Author in the Most Important Sense

Lawyers Should Not Have to Do Everything Themselves

Related Persuadius Articles & Resources

Need Help With an Opening Statement?

Why Attorneys Should Not Run Their Own Trial Technology

The Trial Lawyer Has One Job: Persuade

Relinquish the Clicker. Really.

Great Trial Technology Should Be Almost Invisible

TrialDirector Was Once State-of-the-Art. Trial Technology Has Moved On.

Trial Is a Terrible Place to Learn Technology

A Trial Technician Does Things a Lawyer Shouldn't Be Thinking About

The Economics of DIY Trial Technology Don't Make Much Sense Either

Good Trial Technicians Also Handle the Unexpected

Technology Problems Become Credibility Problems