What you need to know about LCD Monitors in the Courtroom

Technology is cheap! Acquiring a full courtroom monitor setup (plaintiff, defense, witness, judge, dual display) would cost a fortune only a couple years ago. Now you can have a slick outfit for a relatively good price. But don’t let this confuse you…

Take a quick look online and without much searching you can find a 22″ LCD monitor from companies like Acer that are under $200 and are actually pretty good looking screens. In my last trial, the competitor Litigation Support company set up 7 of them. SEVEN 22″ monitors strung throughout the courtroom. It was like walking into a technology wonderland. I really like the way it looked, but I knew how it would not perform well.

All the monitors were run through a switch that allowed for each monitor to be turned off or on in any combination. All the technology was wired and setup properly, and it ran without a hitch. But there was a huge issue, size…

The screen that was on the witness stand was so large that you could only see the face of the person testifying. My client had to turn his monitor sideways in order to see the judge and witness easier. Defense counsel left theirs up and the Judge seemed pleased with her monitors placement. But just the vast size of these monitors made it hard to see people in the courtroom.

It’s something we should all consider when choosing what piece of technology to bring into the courtroom. Going along with my theory that the technology should be as transparent as possible, the large LCD monitors just don’t fit into the equation. Ideally everyone should be able to view the projection screen, but if there isn’t a position where everyone can, I make sure that at least the judge and jury have a great view of the big screen.


I don’t see any point in bringing in screens larger than 15″-17″. I actually prefer 15″ but they are getting harder to find. The brand/model we are these Sony 15″, unfortunately they are discontinued. Also issue to note is that none of the major trial technology presentation software packages take advantage of a monster windscreen LCD properly.

I would also stress that placement is a big issue, the monitors should be as out of sight as possible, while still viewable. The easiest way to determine if a location is good is to sit behind it and look around at what you can and can’t see. Ideally the screen should not block anything.

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Voir Dire Exhibit Board – Proximate Cause

A Trial Tech view reader from California saw our Negligence board example and had use create a similar board but with the definition of Proximate Cause. We mailed him the print and he had it mounted at Kinkos/Fedex. We printed an extra copy and mounted it, think it turned out pretty good.

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Voir Dire Exhibit Board – Negligence

With two more trials coming up next week I went ahead and prepared some “stock boards” as we like to call them. We offer them to our clients to show the panel the actual legal definitions, rather than trying to explain from notes. We often ship these to the city we are working in and have them mounted locally as well.

While this is a Voir Dire example, using boards in litigation is effective with everything from opening statement to expert witnesses to closing arguments. With the ability to leave them laying around where the jury always gets a constant reminder of what is one them we are huge advocates of combining these with trial presentations.

Here’s an example of Negligence:

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One Tech to Serve Them All?

I’ve worked for both sides on multiple occasions and oddly enough the majority of the time it’s at the request of my client. Cost is the reason I see it being suggested the most. The question you have to ask yourself is; will I save enough to make it beneficial to my case?

If the case is straight forward (we still work a lot of car wrecks) and there really isn’t much trial strategy involved other than presenting the evidence and facts, I think it can be very useful. Our role in these cases usually involves making clips, and calling up documents. I might create a few opening/closing slides for either side. And that’s about it.

Note that it does benefit both sides, the speed of the trial, and the general organization of the parties. In many matters, if the costs weren’t shared it would not be cost effective to use our services in the trial. It is amazing how quickly a trial speeds up when there is very little fumbling around and looking for misplaced exhibits. I think the jury, judge, and court staff appreciate it as well. Everything just flows smoother.

Now that’s a small minority of the cases that benefit from the use of Trial Technology, and the only situation where I would suggest or support the idea. Where technology really shines is when the case is complex, hard to understand, and involves hundreds of videos and hundreds of thousands of documents. In these situations I think the experience, knowledge and overall qualities of the individual Trial Tech’s come into play.

Another benefit of is on many occasions I pull a document up for my client and when the opposing attorney wants to cross examine on that document, they find they don’t have it scanned. This doesn’t happen when the Tech is working on both sides. Either it’s loaded or not (and when it’s not we rush to scan it).

Those two “convenience” reasons are the only real reasons why a large trial should share a Tech. Cost should not be one, and these are the reasons I explain to my clients:

You need independence to gain an additional outside view. A competent Trial Tech might have some great suggestions for topics/questions the attorney might have overlooked. When I’m working on both sides, I keep my mouth shut.

Also, the added stress of having giving your trial strategy to someone that is working for the other side makes for some awkward situations. I’ve never run been asked about the trial strategy of my client from opposing counsel, but if you potentially had millions at stake, how would you feel about having open trial strategy communications in front of “some guy” that is about to go meet with your adversary? It just doesn’t work. This single issue is big enough to forget about sharing a trial tech, we’re just too involved in the inner working of the case.

Another problem that is bound to come up is how do you separate the time restraints? You’ve only got one trial tech, how can they make clips during no examination times? What about at night, who gets those few valuable hours of the Tech’s time? The answer can’t be “bring on another tech” as you can then wave your cost savings away.

There are many reasons not to share a Trial Tech these are just some of them. I’ll stress again, it’s not the best idea if the case has any complexity to it at all. The only time that it would be feasible is if the case is small with not many disagreements nor strategy.