Page 56 - FDCC Flyer Summer 2021

FDCC News
I learned and plan to do to with technology to maximize our visual impact in other upcoming virtual trials.
Making our team look good on camera—hardware and setup
Our defense team and client will gather in our offices where we can spread out to be safe but still have ready access to each other at breaks—we will be able communicate face to face.
I am not going to rely on the cameras in our laptops and will instead have our team and our client using webcams. Each will have good lighting, an appropriate and professional backdrop, and cameras placed at an appropriate height so that no one will have a chin shot profile. If we have learned anything over the last 16 months
of Zoom, lighting, backgrounds, bandwidth, and camera position are critical to looking professional.
Voir Dire—monitoring the prospective jurors during the selection process
There is so much information to
be gathered about the prospective jurors as we view them in their “native” settings. This is a powerful source of insight into the potential jurors that we would never get
in a typical trial. The judge has made it clear that we cannot take screen shots of the jurors. But I will
FDCC Evolve seeks to educate our members on how to use presentation technologies to enhance their story telling skills and improve their powers of persuasion.
have a team member devoted to collecting as much information as possible in this process. Remember on Zoom you can “pin” any of
the participants and enlarge their screen. We will do this for each prospective juror and note anything remarkable that gives us insight into the juror profile.
Evidence presentation during trial proceedings—bringing in an iPad on a separate window
This is key. I have had pretrial conferences with my opposing counsel. He doesn’t know how to use an iPad and the array of presentation apps that we have all come to use and understand. Rather, he will share his whole screen and present documents using Adobe Acrobat.
I will bring my iPad in as a separate presentation device. All exhibits will be loaded into the Trialpad for iPad App, which allows me to prepare callouts and highlights on the fly.
I have also built a Powerpoint, exported it as a PDF, and brought it into TrialPad for iPad as well. That will allow me to present from a single platform.
Setting up my monitors to create a teleprompter
We have all spent enough time on Zoom to notice the distraction that comes when a speaker is looking
at a script—perhaps reading from it—but the script is not in line with the camera. It looks horrible in my opinion. There is an easy solution if you have a webcam that can be moved around and more than one monitor. I will place my webcam on top of my smaller monitor (at the right height) and place that monitor in front of and centered within my large monitor. I can then scroll a script—created as a WORD document—on my large monitor. This is a perfect teleprompter, placing the text on the large monitor (and in large font) at eye and camera level. With a little practice—and having someone on your team confirm how it looks— this setup is perfect for opening and closing.
COVID 19 has forced us to cancel our last two in-person FedTech
U training sessions, but we will be back soon. Stay in touch and share your stories on technology through the Evolve section on the Federation’s website.
Bob Christie is President-Elect of the FDCC, with the Christie Law Group in Seattle, WA. Contact him at bob@christielawgroup.com.
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