WINNING TRIAL VISUALS AND LAW SCHOOL COURSE—VISUAL LITIGATION AND TODAY’S TECHNOLOGY

 This Summer, I am teaching two sections of Visual Litigation and Today’s Technology at Seattle University Law School. These are remote-learning courses. One course is a regular course and the other is a FLEX JD course that is offered to people who working or otherwise unable to attend the three-year program. The FLEX JD course goes for three and a half years.

The courses are perfectly suited for remote learning because students can not only listen and watch presentations online, engage in discussions, submit reports and also actively perform with software and hardware. 

I have developed a Canvas site that for your course. It has all the assignments, instructions, videos and so much more. The home page for the site can be seen above.

The subject matter is ideal for an online course, where students can receive guidance in leveraging litigation software, such as Sanction, TrialPad, and SmartDraw. Also, students can be involved role-play assignments for both a criminal and a civil case using downloadable case files via the book’s website. 

Here are some of the students’ activities: 

• Designing a crime scene diagram and a timeline utilizing the software SmartDraw;

• Creating opening statement and closing argument PowerPoints in civil and criminal cases; 

• Developing a mediation slideshow;

• Working with nonlinear software, such as Sanction;  and

• Touring professional technician and designer sites and discussing the pros and cons of the software and technical support that is offered.

The text for the course is Visual Litigation: Visual Communication Strategies and Today’s Technology, published by Full Court Press, which is the publishing arm of Fastcase. As you can tell from the title, the book focuses on visual presentations in the pretrial venue and in trial and technology. You can purchase the book by clicking on this link. If you are a professor, you can probably get a complimentary copy if you are considering using it for a course. Click here for Full Court Press.

My co-authors of the book are Thomas O’Toole, President of Sound Jury Consulting, and Patrick M. Muscat, former Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, Deputy Chief/Special Prosecution Divisions, Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office (Detroit, MI) and currently on the faculty for Vera Causa Group. 

Should you or someone you know be interested in developing a course similar to the one described above or perhaps enrolling in Seattle University Law School, please contact me (206-930-6601 or clarkrh@comcast.net).