Engaging Your Jury with Demonstrative Exhibits

• Pages: 19-20
• Date: 01 July 2023
• Author: Hon. Carl A. Aveni
• Subject Matter: Civil Law

Published in Litigation News Volume 48, Number 4, Summer 2 023. © 2023 by the Amer ican Bar Association . Reproduced with pe rmission. All rights re served. This info rmation or any porti on thereof may not be c opied or disseminated in an y

form or by any means or sto red in an electronic da tabase or retrieval sy stem without the ex press writt en consent of the Amer ican Bar Associatio n.

It’s the fth day of trial, and the novelty has denitely

worn off. Your expert is on the stand, methodically slog-

ging through the minutiae of your case, but, frankly,

nobody seems very excited about it. The testimony has

been reduced to a series of spreadsheets, now projected

on PowerPoint, but half of the jury isn’t even looking at the

screen. The case hinges on this testimony, but it’s the middle

of the afternoon, and the jurors seem confused. Or listless. Or

just tuned out. And it was wholly avoidable.

Had you spent a little more of your prep time thinking

about demonstrative exhibits, your expert might be out of his

chair, holding the jurors on the edges of their seats. Unlike the

substantive exhibits, which you necessarily take as you nd

them, your demonstrative exhibits can be tailored to clarify

or amplify the most interesting aspects of your case. A good

demonstrative exhibit can add kinetic energy and color to

highlight testimony that would otherwise be static, undifferen-

tiated, or unapproachable.

Once you’ve covered the obvious evidentiary constraints,

there are few limitations on demonstrative exhibit design aside

from your own creativity.

Engaging Your Jury with

Demonstrative Exhibits

By Hon. Carl A . Aveni, Litigation News A ssociate Editor

© Getty Image s

Using Demon strative Exhib its to Activate Ha rd-

Wired Cognitive Responses

From kindergarten, we’ve been conditioned to sit up and pay

attention during show and tell—dutifully passing around and

examining the trinkets of childhood. On the evening news,

even the most complex stories are presented as two-minute

soundbites with accompanying graphics and a helpful chart

or map. On social media, the meme reigns supreme, represent-

ing—or misrepresenting—complex issues with a line or two of

text and a single powerful graphic. The point being that a pic-

ture is worth a thousand words. And a physical model, which

your witnesses and perhaps even the jury can handle, is worth

a thousand bland PowerPoint spreadsheets.

In 1963, McGraw-Hill published the Weiss-McGrath

Report, looking at how people absorb and communicate tech-

nical information. The study also compared memory retention

across three different modes of data presentation: (1) orally

only; (2) visually only; and (3) visually and orally together.

After 72 hours, the group that heard the oral presentation

retained a mere 10 percent of the material. The visual cohort

retained twice as much—topping off at 20 percent retention.

SUMMER 2 023 • VOL. 48 NO. 4

19 | ABA LITIGATION SECTIO N

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