7 Must-Have (Free) Mobile Apps to do Your Job Better

By: Ryan Holmes

In the six short years since Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s iPhone to the world—with his famous 4,000 Starbucks lattes prank—smartphones have become for many people, an absolute necessity in their lives.

The smartphone may also well be the most important productivity tool in—and out of—the office. This year an estimated 200 million workers will tap into mobile business apps to collaborate and conference, access and edit docs, check email, chat and more on the go.

But there’s one dirty little secret: Most mobile business apps kill more time than they save. I preview hundreds of apps on the job at HootSuite, a social media management tool used by Fortune 100 companies, mom-and-pop businesses and five million users around the globe. And I see countless apps that make big promises and don’t deliver. They’re non-intuitive, with clunky interfaces. They have tiny user bases and no customer support. They make simple tasks – like making a to-do list – ridiculously complex.

But the best of the bunch really do make working on the go easier. These seven free mobile business apps – a mix of tried-and-true classics and road-tested upstarts – merit a spot in the phone of any office warrior this year.

Get the list here:

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130312182519-2967511-7-must-have-free-mobile-apps-to-do-your-job-better?trk=mp-details-rc

The 12 Worst PowerPoint Mistakes Litigators Make

by Ken Lopez
Founder & CEO
A2L Consulting

Some online estimates say that about 30 million PowerPoint presentations are given every day. That number seems more than a bit high, and it’s hard to find a credible source for it. But let’s say it’s off by a factor of 80 percent, so that just one-fifth of that many presentations are given each day. Still, that would be 6 million PowerPoints.

In the legal community, we give our fair share. Since legal services are about 1% of the total economy, we can make a guess that at least 60,000 PowerPoints are being given every day in the U.S. legal industry, or about 6,000 for every hour of the working day.

If we assume that every legal industry PowerPoint is being watched by an average of two other people and all of those people charge $200 on average for their services, America’s legal industry is producing at least $3.6 million of PowerPoints every hour! That’s a lot of time and a lot of money. We ought to at least use it well.

PowerPoint has been the dominant presentation software in the courtroom since 2003

Read more here:

http://www.a2lc.com/blog/bid/63708/the-12-worst-powerpoint-mistakes-litigators-make?source=Blog_Email_%5BThe%2012%20Worst%20PowerPo%5D

Trial lawyers share their favorite tech tools in their litigation toolboxes

By Mark Hansen

San Francisco lawyer Christopher B. Dolan’s favorite litigation tool is Trial Touch, an iPad app for trial presentation that he says allows him to prep, organize and try a case while collaborating with his office staff on all documentation.

Roanoke, Va., lawyer Robert Dean’s favorite trial tool is TrialPad, a document presentation app for theiPad that allows him to enhance, zoom and annotate exhibits in court with only a projector, a screen and his iPad.

Montrose, Colo., lawyer David L. Masters doesn’t have a favorite tool, but says PDF writer Adobe Acrobat is the application that has allowed his office to go paperless for more than 10 years and can also be used to present evidence in court.

Those were some of the results of a survey of technology gurus in the legal field on the technology tools they use most in their law practice.

Read more here:

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/technology_tools_for_your_litigation_toolbox/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=ABA+Journal+Top+Stories&utm_content=Google+Reader

Beware of the Anti-Theme in Your Case

By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm:

We’ve written frequently on themes: those little nuggets of language and meaning that distill a case to its persuasive essence. As consultants, we create themes even more frequently, trying to find the right message to leverage a case’s greatest strengths while minimizing or reframing its most important weaknesses. By definition, a theme is a simple message that helps an audience see your case in its most favorable terms. But based on some recent research, there is also a mirror image of that: an ‘anti-theme’ in the form of the condensed message that would turn off your audience and turn them away from your case. Considering these anti-themes when working on the contours of your message can help you know what to avoid and what to preempt in your trial strategy.

The study (Gromet, Kunreuther & Larrick, 2013) focuses on consumer choices…

Read more here: http://www.persuasivelitigator.com/2013/05/beware-the-anti-theme.html

12 Insider Tips for Choosing a Jury Consultant

by Laurie R. Kuslansky, Ph.D.
Expert Jury Consultant

1. Ask people you know and trust who have gone to trial with the jury consultant for recommendations. There is no substitute for talking with people who have actually worked with the consultant. Reputation alone is not enough to go on.

2. Test the waters. Provide the candidates with the same set of information and see what suggestions they come up with at an initial meeting. This allows the jury consultants to do what they are hired for – absorb and interpret information and turn it into useful recommendations. This kind of trial run enables counsel to test the waters at no cost or risk.

3. Find a consultant whom you are comfortable with, but not too comfortable.

Read more here:

http://www.a2lc.com/blog/bid/66427/12-insider-tips-for-choosing-a-jury-consultant?source=Blog_Email_%5B12%20Insider%20Tips%20for%20%5D

Ask a Mentor: The Importance of Listening

By Edward Romero – January 15, 2013

Many skills are needed for trial work. One that is often overlooked is the art of listening. As the late Dean Rusk reportedly said, “the best way to persuade people is with your ears—by listening to them.” This is good advice from a former lawyer, Rhodes Scholar, and the longest-serving United States secretary of state after Cordell Hull.

Like peeling an onion, understanding a case often consists of exposing multiple layers of long-forgotten facts that, when revealed, can be distressing, embarrassing, and emotionally painful. No one enjoys revealing secrets, especially those that are humiliating or that can lead to social stigma or imprisonment. Yet, a trial lawyer must do just that: glean from reluctant clients intimate and unpleasant facts that are needed to represent them properly. This is achieved by developing trust, and the best way to do this is by listening. People with legal problems want to talk. And the more they talk, the easier it becomes for them to disclose secrets and reveal confidences that have remained hidden, sometimes for years. In so doing, a client will develop confidence in his or her attorney, not because of the attorney’s experience in the subject matter, but because the attorney has taken the time to understand the client’s concerns and listen to the client’s fears. The attorney has become a confidant and, in so doing, has developed a trust with a client that might otherwise have taken a long time to develop

Read more here:

http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/minority/articles/fallwinter2013-0113-ask-a-mentor.html

How Interactive Timelines Build and Strengthen Opening Statements

By Morgan Smith

Timelines are probably one of the most common things we create at Cogent Legal for clients in all types of cases. Employment, business and personal injury cases are ideally suited for laying out the facts in chronological order to enhance jury understanding. When discussing the various options of timelines with clients, there are basically two main types to consider: Static and Interactive.

A static timeline can be done on a blow-up board and shown to the jury during any key moment of the case. The downside of a static timeline is that, unless it is really simple with only a few entries, you risk overwhelming the audience with so much information at once that it can be hard for them to understand.

For this reason, we generally recommend attorneys start with an interactive timeline that shows events one at a time so that the jury focuses on a single point as the attorney makes it. The interactive format also allows for document treatments so you can choose a button to reveal key documents that relate to the timeline entry.

Read more here:

http://cogentlegal.com/blog/2013/03/interactive-timelines-for-opening-statements/

The Perils of Arrogance in Preparation

By: Thomas M. O’Toole Ph.D.

Trial attorneys, by nature, have (or at least display) a great deal of confidence.  It’s an essential component of the job. Success in the courtroom demands confidence.  And this confidence is well-earned. After all, you must be doing something right to be where you’re at in your career. But don’t let that confidence create unnecessary barriers. A law degree is not a certification in effective communication.  Thinking through an idea is a fundamentally different task than communicating that idea. Attorneys supremely capable of the former still struggle with the latter, perhaps because communication is so fundamental to our existence that it’s easy to assume we are naturally skilled at it.  That would be false. Perhaps we tend to forget that, while our own ideas are immediately and clearly accessible to us in our minds, they need to be packaged as best as we can in words and images for others to  understand. The challenge is akin to trying to share with a friend the experience of viewing a Picasso by merely describing it to him or her. Even the best words fall short.  Here’s three areas where effective communication often departs from effective strategy at trial:

Read more here:

http://tsongas.com/blog-posts/my-38-minute-5k-and-the-perils-of-arrogance-in-preparation-buy-now-and-get-a-free-zimmerman-epilogue-and-keychain/

10 Signs of a Good Jury Questionnaire

by Laurie R. Kuslansky, Ph.D.
Expert Jury Consultant

A jury questionnaire is distributed to jurors when they arrive for service. More often than not, this is a highly contested document that all parties want to have a voice in crafting. Knowing what to ask for without overreaching is critical since a judge may revert to a default jury questionnaire.

As in any investigation, answers are only as good as the questions. Accordingly, a jury questionnaire should avoid “garbage in/garbage out” like the plague.  I have seen far more bad questions than good ones on jury questionnaires.  The following is a guide to help avoid questionnaires that ask a lot, but answer little by way of useful information and helpful results.

A good jury questionnaire …

1. Avoids questions that reveal your good jurors.Perhaps the most frequent mistake is asking questions to reveal friends rather than enemies. For example, why should a civil defendant ask, “Do you think there are too many frivolous lawsuits?” or “Do you agree there should be a cap on damages?”  If someone agrees, you have just given your opponent a gift.  You’ve done their job for them and made it easy to target your good jurors for follow-up questions or a strike, whether for cause or a peremptory.

   Instead, target enemies!  For example, better defense questions leave more room to reveal adverse opinions to your side, such as, “Do you believe that if a case gets to court, it must have merit?”

2. Is based on data, not opinion or past experience alone.

Read more helpful hints here:

http://www.a2lc.com/blog/bid/65970/10-Signs-of-a-Good-Jury-Questionnaire?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+a2lc+%28The+Litigation+Consulting+Report+from+A2L+Consulting%29

Timeline Design for Litigation: When to Use a Static Timeline

“I need a timeline.” This is how litigators often start in asking for legal graphics. This start to the graphics conversation makes sense because timelines are perhaps the most common type of legal graphic, and the most familiar to many litigators. This starting point also makes sense in light of a litigator’s goal—a litigator needs to tell a cohesive story, and the relative timing of various events can help the litigator knit those events into a pattern.

By Michael Kelleher

To design a timeline, we need to understand how the litigator will use the timeline to tell his or her story. In this blog post, I’ll introduce some of the design questions we use at Cogent Legal to help litigators think about their timelines.

To assist in this discussion, below is a “static” timeline illustrating events in two related pieces of patent litigation, one in the ITC (the International Trade Commission), and one in district court:

Read more here:

http://cogentlegal.com/blog/2013/07/timeline-design-questions/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CogentLegalBlog+%28Cogent+Legal+Blog%29