The persuasive lawyer’s toolkit overflows with techniques to deliver a demonstrative’s message with clarity and precision and power: shape, size, priming, positioning, negative space, eye flow, motion, focus lines, fonts, and simplicity. However, Color rises above...
The Multitasking Myth A human brain, presented with multiple, non-autonomous cognitive tasks, must process those tasks serially, not in parallel, meaning it must switch from one to the other and back again, often in milliseconds. Neuroscientists, cognitive...
Timelines Reimagined TIMELINES: THE PROBLEM We’ve all seen them and most likely created them. Timelines begun with the most elegant of intentions that devolve into text box detritus connected via Gordian Knot. Designing effective timelines is challenging. I get it....
THE LAWYERS’ GUIDE TO UNPERSUASIVE COMMUNICATION Chapter 1 The demonstrative–inimical to one’s aspirations of unpersuasiveness–must be avoided. Unpersuasion suffers because communications with visuals are cognitively superior and audiences...
Command Your Case Visuals dramatically increase your persuasiveness Using visuals at trial, in hearings, or with motions increases your persuasiveness; studies show by as much as 58%. Cognitive scientists have demonstrated that visuals are understood better, believed...
Sometimes it pays to judge a book by its cover. I find myself returning again and again to Garr Reynolds’ potent book on presentation, persuasion, and design: presentationzen. The core of the book is summed up by its opening quote from Leonardo da Vinci, “Simplicity...
