Does My Case Need Forensic Animations?
As a personal injury lawyer, you have to be mindful of expenditures, especially if you’re working on a contingency basis and have to foot the upfront costs associated with initially building a case on your own. You also want to make sure that any expenses you incur add value to your client’s case. These concerns lead many personal injury attorneys to ponder the question, “Does my case need forensic animations?”.
If our Advocacy Digital Media team were to provide you with a resounding “yes” as an answer to whether your case needs forensic animations, our response would potentially come off as a bit biased. So, what we will do at continuum instead is share factors that you may want to consider using your legal professional judgment to decide whether having trial exhibits aids you in presenting a strong case that coincides with zealous advocating on behalf of your client.
What Is Forensic Animation?
Forensic animation is a technology-generated visual re-creation of different stages of an event, such as a personal injury incident. Personal injury attorneys use legal animations in the courtroom to help those charged with reaching verdicts, including jurors and judges, visualize how accidents transpired.
Many times, there are multiple “moving parts” that create a combustible mix, resulting in an accident. Our Advocacy Digital Media animators rely on the combined use of data and technology to make complex material clearer, including the chain reaction of events that resulted in a catastrophic outcome.
How Attorneys Use Legal Animation in Courtrooms
Over the years, our Advocacy Digital Media team has learned a lot about how our lawyer clients plan to use our forensic animations in the courtroom when trying personal injury cases. Some of the ways they have include:
- For imagery manipulation: Zooming in, zooming out, speeding up, or slowing down an animation can prove invaluable as jurors attempt to make sense of the bigger picture or focus in on a more specific issue aspect of how an incident happened.
- To re-create the unfolding of events from multiple points of view: Showing varying perspectives may resonate with jurors differently or disprove one party’s story about how the incident transpired.
- When attorneys have limited mastery of the subject matter they’re presenting: While you may do your best to learn material backward and forward as you prepare for trial, some concepts can be challenging to master. Our experience is that many of our attorney clients have used interactive trial exhibits to proverbially open the door so they can bring in expert witnesses to offer a more competent (and credible) explanation of material to jurors.
- When the subject matter is so complex that it’s hard to explain it in just words: Examples of scenarios where this may be an effective option to show the chain reaction of events that led from one defective part’s failure to causing other issues resulting in an accident or two different vehicles’ speeds leading up to a crash.
The Advantages of Forensic Animation
There’s an old saying that goes, “Seeing is believing,” which is critically important to you as a personal injury attorney since it’s your responsibility to prove your client’s assertions the defendant’s negligence is responsible for the harm they suffered. So, the fact that forensic animation breathes life into an otherwise standard, mundane verbal delivery of facts and evidence is one of the more notable advantages of forensic animation.
Other advantages associated with the use of forensic animations include that they can:
- Keep jurors engaged: It can be really challenging for jurors to remain focused on a case presentation in the courtroom when it seems like it’s long and drawn out. Anecdotal accounts from past polled juries reveal they’re better at remembering information when presented in a visual way.
- Move cases along, pleasing the Court: You’ve likely heard the saying that a “picture speaks a thousand words.” Our animators can depict what may require lots of words to describe a concept verbally with 2D and 3D imagery that can send home a message to jurors in a matter of seconds or minutes. This is a good thing as many judges are nowadays limiting how long the different sides have to present their cases to stay on schedule. Thus, presenting animations that quickly dispel material may make the Court happy, which can, in turn, affect their rulings and help you communicate all necessary evidence.
Does Your Case Need Forensic Animations?
Forensic animations are a financial investment, so we find that our attorney clients tend to carefully weigh whether they’re right for their cases. Factors you may want to consider when deciding whether to have Advocacy Digital Media create interactive trial exhibits like these include whether:
- An expert witness you hired believes it will clarify or enhance their testimony
- Opposing counsel (the defense in a civil case) is also preparing to present forensic animations at trial
- The courtroom demonstratives will actually be admissible, which is largely contingent on the relevancy and verifiable accuracy of data
- There’s enough turn-around time for animators to do a high-quality, thorough job before its slated presentation date
- The cost-benefit analysis checks out, so the animation will enhance the strength, and thus value, of the case enough to warrant the expense of such exhibits
As for the latter two points, a preliminary discussion of your forensic animation needs and the data you have on hand should be enough for our Advocacy Digital Media team to give you a proposed quote and timeline for your project’s completion.
Talk to the Creative Experts Specializing in Forensic Animations
When it comes to presenting evidence in a courtroom, photographs, surveillance camera footage, and first-hand and expert witness testimony, all have value. However, when presenting an opening or closing statement in which you convey how you believe your client suffered injuries or lost their life or when conveying complex subject matter like what caused an airliner to break apart, causing a crash, forensic animation can play an invaluable role in a case.
Our Advocacy Digital Media team would like to learn more about the data in your case and the messages you’re looking to convey. This will guide us in determining how we can best help you. It may also assist you in answering the question, “Does my case need forensic animations?”.
Our initial consultation begins with a review of the scope of your prospective forensic animation project, including your available data and the type of modeling, whether 2D or 3D, that you’re looking for. Trial dates can fast approach, and we want to ensure you have the demonstrative evidence you want to present in the courtroom in time, so please reach out to our interactive trial exhibits company today so we can get started working for you.
