Module 5

Timelines, diagrams and structure: showing sequence, process and relationships

Not everything a lawyer must show is a number. Much of what clients, boards and courts need to see is order, process and relationship: what happened first and what followed, how a decision is made, who owns whom and who reports to whom. These are the jobs of timelines, flow charts and structure charts. They are among the most useful visuals in legal work, and among the most abused. A timeline with forty events and no emphasis proves nothing. A flow chart with fifty boxes and crossing arrows is worse than the text it replaces. A structure chart that omits the one entity that matters can mislead as surely as a truncated axis. This module teaches how to design each kind: how to choose the events for a chronology, scale it and show the intervals that make the argument; how to draw a process or a decision with a few clear shapes; how to draw ownership and relationships; and how to check every diagram against the documents before it leaves the building. It builds on the earlier modules: one message per picture, an honest design and a title that states the point.

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.