“A picture is worth a thousand words?”. Richard Posner asks a rhetorical question. Lawyers think that the more they write in their briefs, the better they defend their clients. Posner, the judge, disagrees. He complains about receiving appellate briefs without pictures, maps, objects or diagrams, when they could be useful for understanding the disputed facts.

Posner’s claim is especially important today. In the not too distant future, the judges will be millennials who grew up using YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Judges who grew up in the visual world. An entire generation that places great emphasis on visual content. The Internet and social media have changed the way people learn and express themselves, and future judges will be the result of that change. Lawyers must adapt. They must prepare to present their cases before these judges. They will have to use visual tools, because these are the tools judges expect.

Shall we judge the judges?

So how can lawyers adapt? How can I present my cases in an increasingly visual world? What kind of preparation do they need? One way to answer these questions is to look at other fields of knowledge that have worked with visual content. The obvious suggestion is to answer these questions by asking cinematography for help.

55% of the judges dismissed by the Judicial Council in 2022 committed a very serious criminal offense of obvious negligence

Lawyers, when presenting the facts of their case, must tell a story. Filmmakers have developed a knack for telling stories that unfold over years in just a few hours. In Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example, a bone used by a Neanderthal as a weapon is turned into a space rocket en route to an interplanetary mission.

Lawyers should take Posner’s advice very seriously. They should include pictures, maps and graphs in their writing…

One important thing is the order in which the story should be told. The intuition will be to tell the story chronologically. But there are other ways to do it. In The Godfather, for example, Coppola decided to tell the story of Vito Corleone at the same time as he told the story of his son Michael. This dynamic helped him to see the similarities and differences between the two characters. Using this technique, Coppola not only managed to tell a 30-year story in a few hours, but also managed to get the audience to side with Vito, but be more skeptical of Michael. A lawyer could learn something from Coppola. You can present your tort case by comparing the actions of the victim and the perpetrator.

Lawyers should take Posner’s advice very seriously. They should include pictures, maps, and charts in their writing when these tools help make their arguments clearer. They should be seen not only as experts in legal doctrine, but also as storytellers. And in the role of storyteller, they can seek help from techniques that filmmakers have developed over time. Come to think of it, law schools should include courses in cinematography. (OR)