Module 4

Numbers people can understand: frequencies, relative and absolute change and honest framing

Lawyers present numbers constantly: the probability of success, a rate of complaints, the share of a loss that is recoverable, the chance that a test result is wrong. Most readers, including most professionals, are bad at reading them. They confuse percent with percentage points, read ‘doubled’ as ‘very likely’ when the base is tiny, and cannot easily work with a statement such as ‘a 5 per cent false-positive rate’. The remedy is not to avoid numbers; it is to put them in forms that people can understand. Research on risk communication has found that natural frequencies (‘3 in every 100’) are understood far better than percentages or probabilities, that giving the absolute change as well as the relative change prevents alarm or false comfort, and that a number without a base and a period cannot be judged. The same figure can also be framed to alarm or to reassure, and a lawyer who chooses the frame carries a responsibility for the impression it creates. This module teaches these habits, and the Number Framer shows the same change in several framings so that you can see the difference.

General education on visual communication for lawyers, using invented organisations, people, data and cases. It states common practice in simplified form and does not describe any one country's law or court rules, which differ and change; rules on exhibits, demonstrative aids, disclosure, candour and confidentiality in particular vary. The tools apply simple rules to descriptions and text that you supply. It is not legal advice, and it does not replace advice from a qualified lawyer on a real matter.