Module 6

Slides and one-page summaries: building an argument people can follow

Most legal presentations are documents projected on a wall. Each slide has a topic as its title, five or six bullet points of full sentences in small type, a table copied from a report, and perhaps a clause number. The audience reads the slide faster than the speaker can talk, stops listening and remembers little. The lawyer, who has worked hard, wonders why nobody acted on the advice. The fix is a different idea of what a slide is. A slide is a visual aid to an argument that the speaker makes; its job is to carry one point, and its title states that point. The detail belongs in a handout or the report, which people can read in their own time. The same principles apply to a one-page summary or a decision page for a board, where the reader has minutes and needs to know what is proposed, why, with what risk and what is asked of them. This module teaches headlines as claims, one idea per slide, short text in plain words and active voice, handling numbers and charts on slides, structuring a presentation, writing the summary page, and the legibility and accessibility that make the whole thing usable. The Slide Checker reads the words and length of your slides.

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.