The CLE Journal April 2000, Vol. 2 Number 2

By

Richard Gabriel

Introduction

Whether you are a speaker in a CLE seminar or a trial lawyer in front of a jury, you have to compete with the barrage of television images, movies, CD-ROMs, Internet, and Web sites. You are at a disadvantage in this competition because of the sheer volume of information you are competing with. Most audiences these days get information that is accompanied by music, fast-cut editing, evocative images, and fancy graphics. Compare this with a lecture format (conjuring up the image of those riveting tort classes in law school) and you, as a speaker, can come out a poor second. This article is geared toward helping the speaker close this learning gap so that they increase the attention of their audiences, as well as the retention and impact of the messages they are delivering.

A. Blueprints: Refining and Structuring Your Information

Whether you are doing closing argument on a medical malpractice case or doing a CLE program on the latest tax codes, you are conveying a lot of information. Usually, it is complex information. There are three things to keep in mind when structuring your presentation:

1. You should ask yourself what is the really important information you are conveying. To do this, you should have a concise theme for your presentation. The key word here is concise. A theme should typically be a sentence to two sentences in length. It should be focused and not overly broad.

2. You should ask yourself what information you can cut out of your presentation. This is difficult. Mark Twain once said, "I'm sorry. I didn't have time to write you a shorter letter." We spend so long in our area of practice or on a particular case, that we hold onto every precious fact and issue as if it was a special child, raised and nurtured by the hours of work we spent on it. Let it go. In every single opening statement or CLE presentation, there are probably three. You have that much material. But ask yourself, "How does this issue relate to my main theme?" If you craft your theme well, you will discover what facts you can carve away. Remember, Michaelangelo, in explaining his work, said that he did not carve statues. He sculpted away everything that was not the statue.

3. Group your information into categories. And while you may have seventeen relevant points to your talk, group your presentation into three categories. No more than five if you have to. These categories you create should be broad enough so that you can put sub-categories to these major points. The goal is to create digestible information nuggets for the brain. Information McNuggets if you will. That way a juror or a CLE participant can respond, when asked about what a case or speech was about, "Well, she talked about three major issues." Or "This case was about five things." Now that you applied a theme, as well as culled and categorized your presentation, there are a three more structural elements to consider.

1. Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

"Headlines Make Info Snap"

Early in this century, newspapers were written for the commuter. If you had a short commute, you may only get time to read the headlines. This way, you would still know basically what happened. If you had a longer commute, you could read the first few paragraphs of the story and get more in-depth information into what happened. If you had a longer commute still, you may have been able to turn the page and read the whole story, with history, context, and supporting research or investigation. This kind of journalism is even more prevalent today Structuring presentations as journalism allows your listeners the same luxury. They get to select the depth and scope of the information they need to use from your presentation. Additionally, you are assisting the listener in taking notes about the most relevant portions of your talk. Too often, we start with all of our background information without giving our listeners a context or a sense of where we are going. In structuring your presentation as a news article, make sure you have pithy and catchy headlines for your major issue categories. Follow this by the critical information that illustrates the headline. Then layer in more detailed information on background and research to support these major convincing points. By doing this, you are hooking your audience and giving them an incentive to stay with you as get into more detailed information. Watch your local news and look at newspapers and magazines for examples of this technique.

2. First Things First: Prioritize and Sequence Your Presentation Points

The laws of primacy and recency apply here. People remember most what they hear first and remember next most what they hear last. Even though you are used to thinking about your subject matter in chronological order (such as in a trial), your most important points could get buried if they come toward the end of the presentation. Ask yourself what order would best suit the presentation of the material. If you are giving a CLE program on a recent Supreme Court decision, you may start with the decision, then go back to the first legal decision to show the evolution of the law in this area. Or you may start with decision, then break the decision down into three (That's right, three!) important issue areas that distinguish the decision. If you want to show how the recent decision deviated from precedent, you can chronologically show how judicial decisions have been rendered up until the most recent decision. To show the inadequacy of existing law, you can present specific cases and show the issues not addressed by appellate decisions. There are numerous other presentation sequences, to be sure. You are only limited by the theme of your presentation your and your creativity in rendering the valuable points meaningful to your audience.

3. Creatures of Habit - Using Your Audience's Experience to Amplify Points

People are much more willing to listen to material that relates directly to their experience. Jury research shows that a full third of all deliberations are spent on relating personal experiences that have nothing to do with the case at hand. Relating your material to your audience's experience is especially important when you are dealing with complex legal or technical issues. In a patent case involving formulas for chemical compounds, it might be useful to relate the chemical composition to a cooking recipe. Or you may relate the patent infringement to an idea that a worker gets at the office that is then stolen by another worker who takes credit for it. This same principle applies to any CLE presenter. Any speaker that takes a presentation issue from the conceptual and places it in the practical experience of the audience will increase the retention of the information.

4. "Wait a minute! What about….?" - Creating Clarity and Completion

The last thing to consider when you are finalizing the structure of any presentation is what may be missing for the audience. Toward this end, it is important to step into the audience's shoes and ask, " If I was sitting here listening to this, what would I be confused about? What would be missing for me? What don't I have enough information about?" These questions let you fill in the missing blanks and tie up any loose ends for your audience. When a juror gets confused or stuck on a point early on in a case, they may miss most of the most relevant evidence because their minds are still saying, "Wait a minute! What about…?"

B. "Give Them the Old Razzle Dazzle"-

Presenting Information to Optimize Audience Retention and Learning

In the stage musical, "Chicago", successful criminal defense attorney Billy Flynn sings about his ability to persuade juries. And while many may decry our media age for the dearth of "content" and the ability of audiences to critically analyze complex information, the fact remains - audiences are more moved by how something is presented than by what is presented. Toward that end, there are devices that a CLE presenter and trial attorney can do to increase the attention and retention of their audiences.

1. Visual Learning

People get most of their information visually these days. Television and computers have created a dependence on the visual image. Even newspapers have increased the amount of photographs and graphics to reinforce the content in their articles. Educational psychology tells us that information retention increases dramatically when reinforced with some sort of visual image. Yet it is remarkable how many CLE and courtroom presentations do not have visual support. After you have planned the structure and content of your presentation, it is important to go through your major points. Think of what might visually support each of those points. You might create bar graphs or pie charts to support data you are presenting. You may have photographs or bullet point charts. You may decide to use blowup boards, overheads or slides. You may use an ELMO (document camera), a Powerpoint computer presentation, or something as fancy as a CD-ROM or bar code presentation system. Sometimes video can highlight certain points in your presentation. In using visuals to enhance your presentations, there are a few things to keep in mind. The visual needs to illustrate, clarify, or simplify the material being presented. The visual does not necessarily need to relate to the substantive aspects of the presentation. When I give seminars on jury selection, I may use short video clips from "My Cousin Vinny" or "Twelve Angry Men" to simply make the audience laugh or be thoughtful about a point I am making about juror bias. These video clips also help to break up the presentation into segments and punctuates certain substantive points I am making. Finally, make sure any visuals you use simplify and clarify the content of your presentation. I have seen numerous speeches where the presenter will simply xerox the relevant tax code onto a transparency and put it on the overhead projector. I have also seen timelines in trial that contain every event in the case. Too much information in a visual can serve to confuse rather than clarify.

2. Variety is the Spice of Life

One of the easiest ways to increase retention is to give your audience information through a variety of channels. People process external information about the world around them through three primary sensory channels: visual (seeing), auditory (hearing), and kinesthetic (feeling). Most information in the law is typically communicated through the verbal or auditory channels. Audiences these days crave variety. If you can use pictures, play music, and give your audiences something to touch and hold onto, you can create an interactive presentation that increases their retention of the content you are delivering.

3. Words, Words, Words

Content is still king in the courtroom and the classroom. What you have to say is still core to the communication process. In designing the verbal aspects of your presentation, there are several ways to improve the attention of your audience and to give the spoken word more punch. First, some market research has shown that an audience will accept as fact what they hear 21 times. Repetition, repetition, repetition is the key. Once you have picked a central theme and message for your presentation, it is important to repeat that message numerous times. Post-trial jury interview reveal that jurors have been given simple themes and soundbytes often repeat those themes in their deliberations. Similarly, advertisers count on you humming their jingles as you stroll down the grocery aisle or drive down the street looking for a fast food restaurant. Anecdotes and stories are another way to make the verbal content more compelling for your listeners. Stories are used for entertainment, to illustrate points, and to provide lessons or morals to the information you are presenting. This is especially important in making complex information more accessible. Let's say you are teaching the latest biotechnology patents in stem cell research. It is easier for an audience to relate to a story about a patient who had a rare disease that the doctors could not diagnose or an anecdote about a lawsuit between a field researcher in a clinic and a large teaching hospital than complicated legal rulings or medical findings. When you tell a good story, you have the audience's attention. Then you can work through the complicated information using the story as a reference. Advertisers make their livings by inducing an emotional reaction in us to cars, barbecue sauce, and floor wax. They do this by using descriptive language. Pay attention to radio ads. Not only do they make use of sound to create a "drive-time" reaction, but they also use adjectives and adverbs to make what they are selling vivid and evocative. Likewise, it is important for us to use descriptive language in educational seminars and in courtroom presentations. Not only does it make the subject matter more colorful, but it also gives the listener a suggestion about how they should feel about what you are presenting.

4. Virtual Reality - Interactive Presentations to Enhance Learning

Television is one of the main reasons we have become so passive in our information acquisition. However, the computer industry and online services are starting to change that. One of the reasons that CD-ROM and online game entertainment are such growth industries lie in their ability to make entertainment interactive. Both interactive gaming and "virtual reality" have the ability to put a player in the middle of game or a situation and let them act out a scenario. I mentioned earlier about how information retention is increased with visual accompaniment. This same research has shown that retention is even more greatly enhanced when the participant is able to interact with the information. This is especially important in skill building. You cannot improve your golf or tennis swing by only reading an excellent description by Tiger Woods or Pete Sampras. You have to go out and practice. Although intellectual information does not lend itself as easily to interactive principles, it is probably more important to attempt to make this information live for your audiences. You can do this in CLE seminars and courtrooms through a series of techniques. In court, your interaction with the jury is extremely limited. However, you can increase their interactivity by preparing good visual presentations and trial notebooks to get key documents into their hands. A CLE seminar is an easier place to interact with your audience. Interactive learning is starting to become a mandatory part of continuing legal education. The California Judges Association has determined that all of their judicial programs must contain participatory teaching elements. Audience interaction can be as simple as asking your audience a question and having them give you varied responses. However, demonstrations are one of the easiest ways to create a more profound interactive learning experience. For example, when I am doing a seminar on jury selection, I will often get six volunteer audience members to be jurors and do a mock jury selection when we are discussing the principles of voir dire questioning. Similarly, you can use role-playing and exercises to increase audience participation. Consider this difference. You can explain the significant legal issues in a new court ruling in a lecture format; or you can give the group the ruling, ask them to read it, and then to volunteer what they think is relevant in the ruling. While this process takes more time and it is harder to control audience responses, your audience will be more fully engaged with the material. If you find that you do not have time for audience interaction or a visual illustration, consider merely putting the information in the seminar materials and reference it as a footnote during the presentation. You can also divide participants up into a group of two to four people and give them a task to complete. For example, in a seminar about settlement negotiations, give several small groups two sides of a case study and have them engage in mock settlement discussions. After they have completed a round, discuss what happened and cover the principles you want them to use. Have them go into a second round to see how these principles work in action.

Conclusion