TeplowCucurullo Communications | Legal Graphics

Whenever people hear that I do Trial Exhibits for Litigation Support they inevitably say something like, "oh, so you do Exhibit Boards." It's a tricky question because it associates the end product with the actual process. In the end our work might indeed be Exhibit Boards; it might be a PowerPoint presentation, or a Medical Animation, or any number of alternatives. The real challenge is arriving at the right end product without the audience, (the judge, jury or arbiter) ever sensing that the final piece was a circuitous exploration of visual experimentations and view only a natural, seamless presentation of the facts.

Much of our work involves complex issues of patent infringement, scientific mumbo jumbo on a scale, or nano-scale, almost incomprehensible to many of us. To boil down what's actually at stake we often use analogies to make our case. It's fast, to the point, and accessible to almost everyone. It's a great tool. To elaborate what we do with demonstrative evidence, let me give an example. Ernest Hemingway's book, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is one of my favorite reads. It is the essence of individual human bravado in the face of overwhelming adversity. Courage and loyalty brace every passage. The movie, on the other hand, sucks. It glosses over the essence of the book and presents an unconvincing day in the life of the Spanish Civil war. This is what I would call a poor graphic visual interpretation if this had been a legal graphic. 2001 A Space Odyssey, by Arthur Clark is also one of my favorite books, full of thought provoking situations and mind blowing assumptions, taken literally, like the Hemingway film, you'd have superficial understanding of the plot where as the film version, by director Stanley Kubrick, accomplishes what I try to accomplish in our trial graphics: to literally make understandable the core of the subject without literally transcribing the facts. "Truthful interpretation" might be the best way to put it, but it also leaves an impression in the viewer’s mind of an inevitable conclusion. In any event, if you can look at your own final legal graphics and find that you are drawn into understanding the otherwise incomprehensible complexities within the first few seconds of seeing it, then I think you have an effective graphic solution.