VISUAL LITIGATION AND TODAY’S TECHNOLOGY-- REMOTE LEARNING

I teach Visual Litigation and Today’s Technology at Seattle University Law School. This is a remote-learning course. I teach one course that is scheduled for the summer semester and another that is a short course (four-days long) scheduled during the intersession break between fall and spring semester.

The courses are perfectly suited for remote learning because students can not only listen to presentations by veteran trial lawyers and engage in class discussions but also actively perform with software and hardware. 

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. 

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 setting up a course similar to the one described above, please contact me (206-930-6601 or clarkrh@comcast.net) because I have a Canvas site that you could modify to use for your course.