What Costs Nothing, Takes No Time, and Will Substantially Increase The Persuasive Power of Any Pleading?
Lawyers are storytellers, and one of the most compelling ways to tell a story is through using “moving pictures”. These are not necessarily pictures that have motion (although they certainly can be), but rather, the pictures we use must have EMOTION. Humans are visual learners, and we are a society that craves information in visual form. If we can find even ONE image that illuminates the beating heart of our story and amplifies the theory of our case, the words we say may fall away, but the emotional fire of the images we project will be unshakable.
One simple and cost-effective way to begin your journey into the world of visual advocacy is to put pictures in your pleadings. In so doing, you begin to compel your audience to see the human heart behind your case and cause, not just the abstracts and legalisms. When you use photos, be sure to put them in the body of your pleadings. The lawyer in us may be compelled to cite to the photo as an exhibit/attachment and include it at the end of the document behind a cover page. Don’t do that!! If you do, you make it easy for your reader to look away. It is a leap of faith they will flip to the back at all. Even if they do, why force upon them the equivalent of a bathroom break in the middle of the best part of the movie?
Here is a quick video tutorial to get you started: