Presentation Primer Learn the basics of trial presentation hardware. - - PDF document

I

n our last article, we looked at the h a rd wa re needed to get digital data, documents and video into your comput- e r. This time, we will go in re verse and consider how to get all of that digital data out of your computer and into the consciousness of the trier of fact or

• pposing party.

Printers

T h e re is not much sense in scanning e very document if you can’t print out some or all of them for exhibits, attach- ments or anything else. Adobe A c ro b a t tends to re q u i re high-performance print- ing unless you are content to run out for coffee during the lengthy printing pro c e s s . You also will tend to use your printer to print multiple hard copies of scanned doc- uments rather than make photocopies, particularly for color images. Reprinting directly from scanned documents, especially when selecting portions of seve ral different documents as discovery or exhibits, usually is faster and easier than instructing a secre t a r y to make a complex set of photocopies and then checking to make sure the work was done corre c t l y. Generally, it’s also less expensive, after taking into account the cost of buying or leasing a photocopier, paying a charge per copy and purchasing copier supplies. If you use your printer in this man- ner, you will gain some extra efficiency 40

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LAW OFFICE COMPUTING

but put heavier stress on your printer. You will need a fast laser printer with a high duty cycle, at least 25 pages per minute and a 15,000 copy per month (or higher) rated duty cycle. Joe bought an HP 2300 and then added an additional 128 MB DRAM to print Ac robat documents faster. The HP 2 300 is inexpensive and more or less adequate for this role, although we don’t understand why Hewlett-Pa c k a rd doesn’t release a higher capacity toner cartridge for the 2300 — current versions are rather over-priced at about $125 each and provide only 6,000 pages. If you can afford to do so, a faster laser printer, such as the HP 4200d with a larger print cartridge capacity, is prefer-

• able. Adding a lot of extra printer memo-

Presentation Primer

Learn the basics of trial presentation hardware.

By Joseph L. Kashi and Thomas Boedeker

ry is definitely important to obtain maxi- mum performance from a 4200d. Unfortunately, HP typically ships its printers with the minimum usable mem-

• ry, and if you purchase HP - b rand mem-
• ry updates, you easily can spend more

for them than the actual purchase price

• f the printer itself. HP uses a pro p r i-

etary 100-pin memory module for the 4 200d and prices those memory mod- ules at roughly 10 to 15 times what sim- ilar generic 168-pin memory costs on the

• pen market, a business tactic we are

s u re will surprise and shock every HP printer cartridge customer. You will need a lot of memory in a ny digital law office printer, but we s t rongly recommend you try to pur- chase non-HP memory from a re p u t a b l e Internet vendor. You also will need a color printer connected to your system — we have been surprised at the number of scanned color photos and exhibits that need to be printed for trial. Joe was using an older HP DeskJet 932 for routine prints up to 8 - by - 10 inches and a large format HP DeskJet 1120c printer for exhibits up to 13 - by - 19 inches. This combination worked adequately, but not content with leaving well enough alone, Joe purc h a s e d a replacement for the DeskJet 932, an HP Business InkJet 1100, which p romised faster and less expensive color

• printing. Unfortunately, Joe uninstalled

HP 2300 printer

LAW OFFICE COMPUTING

June/July 2004

41 his DeskJet 932 and tried to install the b rand new Business InkJet 1100 the night before a trial when he had 45 pages of photo exhibits to print. The Business InkJet didn’t work out of the b ox. Error lights kept flashing incon- solably, and HP’s technical support closed down at 5 p.m. PST. To add insult to injury, HP’s We b re g i s t ra tion page was down, so Joe could not even register his printer in the hope of getting tech support early the next morn-

• ing. After about an hour of frustration, Joe

disconnected the new InkJet, re i n s t a l l e d the old DeskJet 932, and slowly but sure- ly printed his exhibits late into the night. When he did get in touch with HP, the re p re s e n t a t i ve was less than helpful, re f e r- ring Joe back to the original Internet deal- er and offering, at best, to exchange his new printer for a refurbished unit. Luckily, the Internet dealer who sold the product was very reasonable and helpful, e ven arranging for UPS to pick up the unit without cost to Joe. Joe’s replacement Business InkJet performed flawlessly and he continues to be very satisfied with its performance in quickly cranking out large color

• prints. This printer is a fine and eco-

nomical complement to a fast black and white laser printer. If you intend to become a truly mobile digital law office, you also will need some means of doing low-volume color and black and white printing a way from the office. The best mobile printer we recently found is Canon’s i 70 Color Bubble Jet Printer, which costs about $400 by the time yo u p u rchase the printer, the optional Lithium-ion battery and charg i n g c radle, and some spare supplies. Still, it’s a reasonably mobile, high-quali- ty printer that fits in the second pock- et of many notebook computer tote

• bags. The i70 works well in a court-

room setting.

Video Presentation Hardware

You need a really good digital projector for courtroom presentations. The best p resentation can be ruined, or at least u n d e rcut, by a mediocre data pro j e c t o r that is not bright enough to be seen readily in a well-lit courtroom or doesn’t have sufficient resolution to present evi- dence crisply and clearly. Although you can get any number of bra n d - n a m e 1,200 lumen SVGA (800-by-600) data p rojectors for $1,000 to $1, 200, the savings is outweighed by the substan- dard performance. After a lot of experimentation, we concluded a reasonable minimum for public presentations is at least 2,000 lumens brightness and XGA (1, 0 24 - by - 768) output capability with optical, not digital, zooming and focusing. A 2,200 lumen or 2,500 lumen projector w

• u l d

be even better in a large, brightly lit c o u r t room, but these are expensive for a sole pra c t i t i o n e r. Even a good 2,000 lumen XGA projector will cost at least $2,200. Joe ultimately settled on an Epson 74c from Protech Projections S y s t e m s ( w w w. p ro t e c h p rojection.com). This c o m p a ny specializes in digital audio- video presentation hard wa re and has good prices. Rod Bradbury at Pro t e c h g a ve us some good advice when we we re comparing projection systems, and Protech’s service was excellent. Protech claims the newest Epson XGA p rojectors have superior image quali- t y. Joe was comfortable dealing with Protech for these highly specialized purchases. Be sure to buy a spare lamp — it will not do to have your digital projector fail in the middle of a trial. A re p l a c e m e n t lamp usually is at least $300. Joe also was interested in an Elmo

• r similar document camera to link with

the digital pro j e c t o r. Like data pro j e c t o r s , document cameras have either 80 0 - by - 600 SVGA output or 1, 0 24 - by - 768 XGA

• utput, with XGA showing a

noticeably better image. Modern document c a m e ras project all or a selected part of a basic flat document image, include the ability to image 3-D objects, and prov i d e motion picture output at up to 15 to 20 frames per minute, which is enough to avoid unpleasant flickering of a video stream. This sort of motion pic- t u re output can provide the jury with a highly magnified image of an auto cra s h reconstruction with small vehicle models simulating an accident sequence. Document cameras can connect directly to the data projector and can pro- vide still images and video output for your PC to capture, store and edit. Be s u re your document camera’s output for- mats and connecting cables are compati- ble with your video capture device. If you get a document camera that includes a base light, you also can use it to p roject X-ray and other radiology films, anatomical charts and similar transparent materials that will not show up well when lit from above. You will want a document c a m e ra that includes complete optical zooming and focusing capabilities to pre- s e r ve crisp image resolution. As is true with digital cameras, avoid relying solely

• n digital zooming and magnification,

which basically fakes magnification and zooming, and quickly causes re s-

• lution loss by enlarging only a por-

tion of the overall image. After much consideration, Joe decided base lighting and optical zooming are important enough to wa r rant buying a mid-range docu- ment camera and narro wed his choice to the Canon Video Visualizer RE-450X. This XGA resolution docu- ment camera retails for aro u n d $ 1, 490 at Protech and comes with both top and base lighting, modest portability when folded (most of these beasts weigh at least 22 pounds and remain bulky even when folded for t ra vel), with good optical capabilities. Canon, after all, did make its corpora t e reputation as a first-rate, pro f e s s i o n a l - grade camera manufacturer. Initially, Joe gave serious consider- ation to Toshiba’s interesting digital data p rojectors that include document cam- e ras (see “Good Projections” on Page 48

• f this issue). These are fairly priced at

$ 1,799 for the 1, 600 lumen SVGA

www.protechprojection.com Smart Board whiteboard

42

June/July 2004

LAW OFFICE COMPUTING

Why Bother?

Pu rchasing digital presentation hard- wa re can be expensive up front but is well worth the cost to the trial lawye r. Experienced judges routinely comment that a good digital presentation is far m o re impre s s i ve and persuasive than t raditional trial practice. Be sure yo u clear your digital presentation approach with the court well in advance of trial. It would be a shame for the court to d e ny your proposed pre s e n t a t i o n method at the last minute and force you to scramble to pre p a re a second-best paper-based trial. Also, be sure yo u check out the courtroom itself well in a d vance of trial. You likely will find the l a yout of a particular courtroom will re q u i re you to bring some odds and ends to be sure everything connects and works smoothly.

Review Your Presentation

You will need to run through any digital p resentation repeatedly until you are sure it will work smoothly in the courtro o m — failure at trial is not an option. Joe found a number of problems with Ve rd i c t System’s Sanction 2.6.0.380 — the video depositions would not reliably scroll the c o r responding synchronized tra n s c r i p t text in the bottom window and the redacting feature would not work at all. Joe surmised these problems were inher- ent to the updated version of Sanction because they occurred with video depo- sitions from three different court reporters and two unrelated digitizing services, and also because Joe’s earlier 2.5 version of Sanction didn’t falter using the same CDs. Joe, unfortunately, had to spend a number of sleepless nights cut- ting, reviewing and recutting those

A B O U T T H E A U T H O R S

THOMAS BOEDEKER is the city manager

• f Soldotna, Alaska. He is the former bor-
• ugh attorney for the Kenai Peninsula.

For a break from work and computers, Boedeker plays golf and reads mysteries and science fiction. Boedeker has been an active attorney and litigator for more than two decades. JOSEPH L. KASHI practices law in Soldotna, Alaska. He received his bache- lor’s and master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his law degree from Georgetown

• University. He is admitted to practice

before the Alaska Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

Sanction deposition clips until they worked reliably without faltering. A re p re s e n t a t i ve from Sanction told us they have since corrected these pro b- lems in the free 2.6.0.382 update and that Sanction is starting to support d e fa c t o s t a n d a rd Adobe Ac robat Po r t a b l e Document Format files, rather than requiring the laborious conversion of your exhibits to larger and less useful T IFF or JPEG formats. These fixes and i m p ro vements should put Sanction back

• n track for trial presentations.

Learning How To Do It

All of this hard wa re is nifty and fun, and can be effective to present data in a persuasive fashion. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have an intuitive sense of how to do so, and learn- ing by trial and error isn’t the best a p p ro

• ach. Luckily, there are sev-

eral good books available. The American Bar Assoc- iation’s Law Practice Management Section publishes an excellent book focused on legal uses — “ Pe r s u a s i ve Computer Pre s e n- tations: The Essential Guide for L a w yers” by Ann Brenden and John Goodhue. Edwa rd Tufte, a p rofessor at Yale University, is g e n e rally considered the leading academic expert on effective visual presentations. Two of his books, “Visual Explanations — Images and Quantities, Ev i d e n c e and Narra t i ve ” and “En v i s i o n i n g Information” provide an excellent general

• verview and should be on every digital

litigator’s bookshelf. (Yep, the guides to digital presentations still are provided on “legacy” paper.) All three books are ava i l- able from Amazon.com.

Odds and Ends

For a complete list of products discussed in this and the previous two columns, visit www. l a wofficecomputing.com. model, and about $2,299 for the 1, 5 0 0 lumen XGA model, document camera attachment included. Howe ver, Joe felt the dimmer light output and lack of base lighting would detract from the quality and flexibility of in-court pre s e n t a t i o n s and the lower-priced SVGA model simply didn’t have enough resolution to throw a crisp image. T h e re is another, more subtle pro b- lem using combo pro j e c t o r s / d o c u m e n t c a m e ras in the courtroom. The pro j e c- tor must be placed where it will pro j e c t a large image visible throughout the courtroom, and that requirement usual- ly limits where you can set up your data p ro j e c t o r. Usually, your computer will be at counsel table and connected to the projector through a video exten- sion cord of proper length. If the document camera is attached directly to the pro j e c t o r , you will need to stand next to the projector when you use it, some- thing that likely would be awk- wa rd and distracting to the trier

• f fact. In contrast, you can sit at

counsel table when using a standalone document camera connected to the data pro j e c t o r by a video extension cable. This is a more organized way to pre- sent your case. After taking all of these factors into account, Joe opted to spend a little more money and purchase the separate XGA 2,000 lumen Epson 74c pro- jector and the Canon RE450X document c a m e ra / v i s u a l i z e r. Ultimately, better pre- sentation clarity and quality helps make a presentation more effective. Data pro- jectors and document cameras are long- term purchases that can’t be upgraded or readily replaced because of their high

• cost. Under such circumstances, it makes

sense to spend a little more for devices with capabilities that will withstand the test of time.

Whiteboards

You probably have heard about digital w h i t e b o a rds. They are blackboard devices that electronically re c o rd eve r y- thing you write on the board and then s t o re all of the jottings as electronic files that can be printed later. Electro n i c w h i t e b o a rds are no longer outra g e o u s l y

• expensive. For example, the Smart Board

line by Smart Technologies starts at about $ 1,500 for a 47-inch diagonal board . These are uncommon but w

• r t hy

adjuncts to digitally presenting your case.

The Smart Board electronically records everything the user writes on it.