3 Problems With PowerPoint As Used By Lawyers

What are the perils of PowerPoint? Our new legal technology columnist, Jeff Bennion, identifies three.

Ed. note: Please welcome our new legal technology columnist, Jeff Bennion.

My name is Jeff Bennion, and I am a new columnist here. I’m going to write all about how we should and shouldn’t use technology in our law practices.

I am a solo practicing out of San Diego. On top of my lawyerly duties, I get asked by lawyers to advise on all matters technical – from e-discovery to trial technology to law practice management. Usually I get brought in after people have tried and failed at something. I worked in a 200-lawyer firm, a midsized firm, and a three-person firm before going solo. I’ve written for Cracked.com on such topics as whether it’s a good idea for Amazon to sell books about knife fighting for beginners, the problems with the jury system, and, of course, the Batcave. I teach college paralegal classes.

One of the most common questions I get asked is, “How do I make my PowerPoints awesome for openings/closings/whatever?” Now, I’m a big fan of using technology in trial. I had a whole article written about all of my trial gadgets that compared me to Tony Stark. I remember how boring those hour-and-a-half classes were in law school, so I wouldn’t want jurors to sit through six hours of watching lawyers talk to witnesses for four days a week for several weeks at a time without breaking it up with some graphics or something.

But PowerPoint is just the worst….

Now, PowerPoint can be all right if done well. But to say it’s a good trial tool is like saying Excel is a good drawing tool just because nerds draw video game characters in it. Here are my major gripes:

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Fatal Mistake #1: Cheese

PowerPoint when used by lawyers just invites so much cheese. It’s not uncommon to see slides with a picture of a jury box and some big text in all caps that says something like “THE POWER IS YOU!” Or the scales of justice with a feather poorly photoshopped into one side to illustrate what the preponderance of the evidence means.

Fatal Mistake #2: Crutches

I was in a personal injury trial one time where our client crashed into a grandma while speeding in the wrong lane. Plaintiff’s counsel spent half of his closing with his back to the jury reading his PowerPoint slides to them. His over-reliance on his slides and lack of preparation became apparent when he said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, here are some things that my client used to enjoy:” [Clicks to the next slide] “Intense Pain” [Clicks again and the next bullet pops up] “Missing work” [Clicks] “Not spending time with her grandchildr… I’m sorry. I think this was supposed to be the effects of the accident…” Just because you have an outline with bullet points doesn’t mean that you don’t have to practice.

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Fatal Mistake #3: No Skipping

One time I was on the defense side in a gang homicide case where a girl was shot in the head. There were autopsy photos where they sawed the girl’s face off and scooped her brains out to show how the bullet bounced around inside the skull. There was even bone-saw dandruff in her hair. It was easily one of the most gruesome things I’ve ever seen in my life. Of course it was excluded, but the DA had it in his PowerPoint and would just jump from exhibit 14 to exhibit 16 by just cycling past the bonesaw exhibit really fast. Trial is very dynamic. You have to be able to change on the fly and move things around. Unfortunately, you can’t do that in PowerPoint.

Anyway, I could go on and on about how sucky PowerPoint is, but all I wanted to do was introduce myself. I’ll go into other alternatives to PowerPoint later and maybe even things you can do in PowerPoint to make it less sucky. I want to talk about e-discovery once I find out how to do it in a non-boring manner. I am going to explain everything about how you can use technology like a boss. If you have anything you want to hear about, let me know.


Jeff Bennion is a solo practitioner from San Diego. When not handling his own cases, he’s consulting lawyers on how to use technology to not be boring in trial or managing e-discovery projects in mass torts/complex litigation cases. If you want to be disappointed in a lack of posts, you can follow him on twitter or on Facebook. If you have any ideas of things you want him to cover, email Jeff at jeff@trial.technology.

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