Posted October 21st, 2008 by admin
Many attorneys are turning to Apple Computer systems for their law practice, and I say good for you if you do the same. I get a great return from using my Mac and so will you. There is almost no good single solution to use the Macs for the law office, however. These Mac Tips will help you utilize your office Mac to its fullest.
Our first Mac Tip will focus on Spotlight, the Mac search savior. You don’t always need a $1000 practice management system to find what you’re looking for in discovery-you can manage most everything with the tool Apple provides.
Let’s now look at what may be your best friend on the Mac: Spotlight. Spotlight does a very good job of searching for all aspects of information, including file names, folder names, file metadata, and more. To get the best use of Spotlight you will need to utilize an organized file and folder naming system (we can help you with this in a later tip), and follow a few steps once you have created your file. First, Ctrl+Click the file and go to “Get Info”. There at the top you will find an arrow to Spotlight Comments. You should enter a short discription and some key word here. From that point on your Spotlight will find that description and use that keyword when you search. This will help you find even the most out-of-place documents.
Posted October 21st, 2008 by admin
Documents play a big role in any trial. To get the greatest impact, your documents must look their best when projected for viewing by the jury or the Court. That comes down to accuracy and resolution. Accuracy comes from the quality of the document you are scanning. Originals almost always provide the most accurate scanned images. If possible always scan the original for your presentation, particularly if you scan in color. Resolution gives you higher quality images to work with. Imaged documents need to have a minimum of 200 x 200 pixels per inch. For trials, however, I always recommend 300 ppi minimums. If the document contains small or blurred text, I recommend scanning in color, or scanning at a higher resolution. Some scanners will allow up to 1200 ppi, but it is rare that you will need above 600 ppi. In any event, most documents project well for presentation purposes when scanned at 300 ppi. If you need to scan a picture, I always recommend scanning in color at 1200 ppi. Remember that higher quality scans will have a bigger file size, but that is why we buy USB Hard Drives.
Posted October 21st, 2008 by admin
In the last article we talked about presenting printed paper documents on your projector, and also mentioned that this method works with any file that you can open on your computer. This method also works to replace another tried and true analog courtroom presentation method: printed enlargements or blowups. Many attorneys choose to create enlargements for their trials, and digiGroup still has many requests to create these for clients’ presentations. We even have attorneys who, while using a digital presentation system, still want us to prepare blowups. For some presentations I think blowups can be very useful, however digital presentations are generally much more dynamic. Most of the enlargements that I come across are pictures enlargements. One of the greatest benefits of using a digital presentation of images is the ability to direct the viewer’s attention by showing the complete image on the large projection screen, and then quickly changing the area of focus by zooming in on a specific section, then showing the entire image again and perhaps zooming in on a different section if necessary.
As long as you start with a high quality image you will be able to zoom in to any detail that you want to call attention to. Let me give you an example of a case that I was reviewing with Michael Jones of Digital Evidence in LA. In that case a woman was hit by an inattentive driver. The defense counsel stated that the woman jumped out into the traffic and the driver swerved and the woman impacted on the passenger side of the bumper. He cited the photograph that the crime scene investigator shot showing a light area of discoloration on the bumper. Michael was able simply zoom in on the image file and easily show that the discoloration was the headlight of the police vehicle behind the officer as he took the photograph.
Remember simple solutions work, and they work well.
Posted October 21st, 2008 by admin
What are my options?
There are many options when presenting evidence in trial, from handing out sheets of paper, to large blowups, to complex animations and video that may take months of preparation. Through the next several articles we are going to take a closer look at each method and how to show digital documents to their best advantage.
First, I want to strike your first objection, “I don’t have the equipment!” In most cases you can do it yourself and all you need is your laptop, a projector, and a screen. Many courtrooms today are being renovated to accommodate digital presentations. If you are in one of these ever increasing number of courtrooms then all you need is your laptop. Just plug it in to the court system and you are ready to go. If, on the other hand, your courtroom doesn’t have a presentation system, ask if they have a screen that can be set up. Most courtrooms that do not have the full system will have a screen installed in the courtroom. If that option is a bust ask about the availability of a tech or multimedia department. This option will cost a little extra, however you can have the courthouse tech get everything set up and ready to go when you, or I should say the judge, is ready to start the trial. These are the best options if you do not want to bring in a service bureau to handle everything. Now that your equipment is set up we can move on to your presentation!
One of the most common myths that I encounter about digital presentations in court is that it is too complex and unwieldy. Many presentations can be effective even without the use of a presentation system. The simplest method of evidence presentation at trial is merely passing your paper exhibit to the witness and the judge. While this seems simple it can actually be complicated in that you must constantly direct the reader to the specific segments that you are interested in showing and try to prevent distraction by other segments of the exhibit. The evidence you are presenting was probably produced from a .pdf document on your computer. When presenting in court it can be far less complicated to just put your .pdf on the screen. You can then enlarge the file and scroll to the specific segment on which you want to the court to focus. This is both simple and effective. This method will work with any .pdf, Word doc, picture, or other file that you can open on your computer. Many attorneys have used this method with great success. There is no time required for learning a presentation system and if you prefer not to operate the computer yourself, an assistant can easily operate the computer for you.
Stay tuned as we cover more presentation methods.
Posted October 21st, 2008 by admin
At digiGroup we want to help you learn more about presenting evidence within a courtroom or arbitration setting. This includes looking at both the tried and true as well as the latest and greatest methods of presentation. From there we hope to give you the best information about the technologies available to you for both pretrial and during trial presentations. We will also include Quick Tips as a part of our series. Quick Tips are short, specific tips about how to perform tasks in a multitude of solutions.
Our goal, by writing this series, is to keep you informed. We also want to hear from you if you have questions about any of these topics. The best way for us to help you is for you to let us know what you want to lean about. So please e-mail your questions to us at questions@digigroup.us.