ne of the most exciting aspects of modern desktop computer technology is the power that it confers on all of us to engage in the creation and manipulation of graphic images. Now I'm not talking about putting fancy shoes on O.J. Simpson's picture, although some of the software that is now very readily available allows almost anyone to change and manipulate photographs. What I'm talking about is the ability to create trial exhibits of various kinds. As I mentioned in my column last month, these computer generated graphics can be displayed either by printing them out and putting them on traditional trial boards, or by using a monitor system or digital projector in the courtroom. Obviously, the simple monitor system is the least expensive to create and use, but in a jury trial, there is a tough call to make. Even the largest monitor may not be able to display fine type on a document or the minute details of a photograph. In some courtrooms, each juror is given a small monitor so they are able to see everything quite well but that is expensive. In other courtrooms, several large monitors are deployed so that every juror is no more than a few feet away from a huge monitor. In courtrooms that are set up for it, however, a digital projector may be the best solution because of the size of the image it can generate. The latest generation of digital projectors can produce a bright image in a normally lit room and thus may quickly become the mechanism of choice for courtroom display technology. Obviously the projector can combine most of the benefits of a trial board with the cost and convenience of electronic files.
Creating electronic exhibits
The four general categories of electronic exhibits are:Word processing files displayed in their native format;
Scanned images of documents stored on the computer harddrive as "tiff" files;
Charts and graphs generated by graphing software or spreadsheet software; and,
Scanned images of photographs and drawings that are stored on the computer harddrive as "jpeg" or similar files.
Word processing documents
Any document created on a word processor can be displayed in the courtroom because the monitor or projector system is simply an extension of the computer desktop monitor. Thus outlines or even charts created by word processors are easily displayed and manipulated in the courtroom in the same way you would manipulate your word processor. In a forthcoming column I will talk in detail about the ability of the new Microsoft Office '97 software to allow you to create an outline in Word and to link each element of that outline to a document or image that is stored in some other program. In fact, I believe that such linked images built around a basic word processing document will be very much at the forefront of courtroom technology in the coming months. That, however, is really another topic and will be reserved for another day.Scanned images of documents
With the advent of relatively high speed and inexpensive desktop scanners, the ability to scan documents into the computer to be used at trial has been greatly enhanced. There are two pieces of software that are far and away the best vehicles for scanning and displaying these documents. The first is Watermark Pro for Windows which I have talked about many times in the past. Watermark Pro is an absolutely wonderful and powerful program for both scanning and displaying documents. Its display capabilities are very dramatic. You can circle words with bright colored lines, you can highlight words very easily as you would with a yellow marker, and you can zoom in on particular words with the greatest of ease. So, if you have a smoking gun document that contains a powerful admission by your opponent, you can highlight that admission and zoom in on it, blowing it up to the full size of the screen. Watermark is very easy to use, both for scanning and for display.The other powerful piece of scanning software that everybody should have because it is so inexpensive is Adobe Acrobat III. Adobe Acrobat has many of the characteristics of Watermark at a greatly reduced price. Adobe Acrobat is essentially an electronic printer and you can put into it documents created in many different software environments. They are all stored in Acrobat as so-called "personal document files" or .pdf files. The .pdf file format is beginning to be widely used in industry because what it does is allow almost anyone who has basic software that is distributed freely over the Internet to view and use Adobe Acrobat-based documents. Acrobat allows much control over the image including a very effective zoom mechanism. What it does not have is the colored annotation capability of Watermark though documents annotated in Watermark or other programs call be saved as .pdf files with the color intact. That may or may not be important to you, but Acrobat is important in other respects because of its fantastic ability to move documents from one format to another. It is widely available from software houses for less than $100.
Charts and graphs
Charts and graphs are extraordinarily easy to create on a computer. Essentially, all you have to do is to put the appropriate numbers into a chart and display that chart as a graph. One of the fascinating things about this graphing capability is that with most high-end spreadsheet programs, such as Paradox or Excel, you are able to graph the same data set in many different ways. What you find when you do that is that some graphs are far more effective than others, and indeed, you may, as you look at the different graphs, come to understand relationships between the constituent elements of the chart that you did not understand before. The same data set can be displayed as a bar chart, as a pie chart, or in a variety of other ways, and you can manipulate colors and shapes with ease. There are some standalone graphics programs which are quite good, but if you buy one of the standard office suites, such as Microsoft Office '97 or Corel Office Suite 7, you will get powerful graphing capabilities as a part of the Suite.Photographs
Photographs are very easily displayed in the courtroom environment after scanning them into your computer. One of the easiest scanners to use is called Easy Photo, and it essentially takes a 4" by 6" photograph and turns it in to a digital image of very high quality. The Easy Photo scanner is quite inexpensive and indeed is included as a part of some of the most current Hewlett Packard computers. You should be able to buy this little scanner for less than $200 at almost any computer supply outlet. There is even a larger model that will scan up to 8" by 10" photos. There are, of course, other more expensive scanners, with more expensive software that provide a broader range of capability than the Easy Photo reader. And, there are outsources popping up all over the place that will scan for a very low price. In all events, it has, in the last year and a half, become extraordinarily easy to scan a color print into your computer and use it in the courtroom.Training your staff
It is, of course, always important to have someone in your office who understands the graphics software very well. I think, however, that trial lawyers ought to be involved in the direct creation of trial exhibits. I think you will find that when you start to do it, it helps you develop and organize your case. Of course you can have someone else do it for you, and you certainly should have someone available who knows the details of the various programs. But, it is not hard to learn basic graphics software skills and I think every lawyer who uses a computer should do that now. Besides, it makes trial preparation fun, at least in part!Next time, we'll take a look at Microsoft Office '97 and Microsoft Publisher '97 which have just become available. They are both an unqualified success that will revolutionize some aspects of trial practice.