The constant advancement of technology has shifted the world around so much, it often feels like we’re living in a different universe. If they choose, lawyers can now have all of their evidence in one convenient laptop, holding the ability to pull up records in a matter of seconds, to deviate to separate arguments, all while eliminating the headache of carrying boxes of paper up the court steps. In an industry such as law, where resistance to change is a commonality, those who lean into technology may just gain the edge they need to win their next big case.

You don’t want to be caught looking like a dinosaur in court when the opposing lawyer brings out a laptop and projector.

Learn more about the positive impact of trial tech on the David vs. Goliath podcast with elite personal injury lawyers Matt Dolman and Stan Gipe and their guest, highly regarded personal injury and medical malpractice attorney Kyle Newman. Matt and Stan explore how the current paper model that most attorneys use feels dated as Kyle speaks about how technology used in trial has evolved, success stories directly connected with technology, and the unlimited potential tech poses for lawyers trying to clearly display their case to a jury.

In this episode: 

• [00:27] Matt introduces today’s guest, New York personal injury attorney Kyle Newman 
• [02:24] Being an advocate for ‘trial tech,’ Kyle explains how utilizing technology in the courtroom helps the jury better understand your case
• [08:08] Kyle answers Stans questions of what a trial tech setup looks like and potential issues you may run into
• [20:34] Kyle answers Matts question of what kind of roadblocks in the court from a judge he may run into when using trial tech
• [30:35] Kyle shares a million dollar case  that he won because of technology he used in the courtroom
• [36:35] Kyle cautions that using tech as a linear presentation, like PowerPoint, may knock your case off board. Prepare your tech to be easy to improvise when things go off-script.
• [38:46] How you can get in touch with Dolman law group with any questions, concerns, or to share your story.

Transcript

Matt Dolman:

Welcome to another episode of the David Versus Goliath podcast. Here with my partner in crime, business partner, Stan Gipe. And today we have our lucky guest, we have Kyle Newman. I would call him an esteemed med mal lawyer out of New York City. What sets Kyle apart really is, and this is a compliment, at such a young age, he has already tried a number of cases to verdict. He’s had several verdicts over in excess of $1 million, which is rare for a lawyer of that age. Kyle, give us a little bit of an introduction. Tell us about your practice.

Kyle Newman:

Sure Matt, thank you for the warm invite. Yeah, for the past 15 years I’ve been a catastrophic injury, medical malpractice attorney. For whatever reason, I fell into doing medical malpractice work. When I first started out, I worked for a solo practice with my father and we had a handful of med mal cases and I was very fortunate to have a mentor who I ended up working for about 10 years with, who was an older retired doctor, who had worked for some of the biggest names in the city and who we grew our medical malpractice, whole practice out with. And I’ve been very, very fortunate to have some great cases, great clients and some unbelievable battles in court that fortunately ended up going our way.

Matt Dolman:

Gotcha. Stan also, I run the firm, I work more on the firm than in the firm these days. And Stan, he’s a board certified civil trial lawyer, so you guys pretty much are going to discuss the same language. What is Kyle’s calling card per se, is trial technology. He’s been asked to speak in front of a number of groups before on how to use technology in the courtroom, how to use as a demonstrative aid to bring the evidence to light and give us a little bit of an overview of what are the techniques are you using and what technology needs to be added to the repertoire of your typical trial attorney? What are they lacking in? How do you take a homogenous case that’s very boring in nature and bring it to life?

Kyle Newman:

Sure. The whole trial technology thing, I also stumbled upon. I went to a CLE in New York with the New York State Trial Attorneys, and I’ll never forget this, it was an unbelievable trial attorney by the name of Martin Edelman, who was talking about trial tech. And there were a few other attorneys that were making presentations, but one thing stood out to me and it changed the entire trajectory, really, of my career. And he was making a presentation about jurors and educating jurors and how people really learn and comprehend things. And he made this statement, he basically asked a question of the whole group who was there. What’s the one thing that all jurors love? And people went around, they said, “Oh, they love their family, they love sports, the Jets,” nonsense like that. And he said, “No,” and it was like he was looking right at me.

I’ve told this story before and he said, “The one thing the jurors love, above all, is television.” This was in probably 2010, so it’s not nearly the tech world that we live in now. But that really hit home to me and really changed my whole way of preparing and presenting evidence at trial and discovering ways to do it. Not only that are impressive to the jury and the whole setup that I use and I know that other attorneys use. Really when you’re going up against someone, especially at my age, being in my late twenties, early thirties, going up against big time defense partners who were consistently, 20, 30 plus years older than me, would walk into trial and think that they could just roll right over me. The minute that I set up that presentation software and my whole setup, it gave me an incredible advantage over these older attorneys who were not tech savvy.

Granted they were great trial attorneys, but the ability to present evidence fluidly so that you can, especially in medical malpractice work, there’s so much medical records that you’re going through. Depending on the complexity of the case, you could be going through 1,000 page chart, 5,000 page chart and need to maneuver through the chart with such speed, almost at the speed of thought. That’s what I think with trial technology, is that you’re able to not only present but you’re able to cross-examine where any page in the entire medical record, across all the records that you have, you’re able to pull up, enhance, there’s all types of toys, with highlighting and enlarging, but that really, there’s no place to hide.

Early on in my career I found that I would do like everyone would do, I would print out the $100 a sheet, those big cardboard cutouts and lug to court, maybe 5 to 10 of those, which was a big expense for a smaller firm having to… I’ll never forget this, one time it was pouring raining and I had to come to court with a whole mess of these and it literally disintegrated on the steps of the courthouse.

I was on the subway lugging this thing, the sheet was coming off, it just melted away. And without having to bother with that, when you have a trial tech set up, people might think it’s so complicated. It really actually simplifies things really so much in a way that you’re in normal everyday practice, you’re doing these things, you’re just uploading documents, essentially scanning documents into your system and pulling them up. The real key is your preparation, knowing where the key evidence is, knowing really your entire record so that with the right prep and with the right outline, they have nowhere to hide, nowhere to go.

Also, just one instance comes to mind where I had a doctor on the stand and I had some of these blowups that were ready to go, which were critical piece of evidence, I thought. And what this doctor would do was he would then refer to pages that I didn’t have a blowup of, that were outside of this, maybe a progress note or a nurse’s note, where then I was kind of stuck. I’m like, “Oh wait, it’s not in the blowup that I brought.” I’m not then able to follow up questions and again, put it up so that the jury can actually see and also hear the testimony. And that was really a big critical thing for me getting into the trial tech stuff. And yeah, I was very fortunate to learn it very young because it’s an incredible advantage that you still don’t see that many attorneys using out there, which is surprising to me.

Stan Gipe:

Okay, I got to be a confession here. I’m one of those guys who showed up to trial with the boxes of paper up until probably five years ago. Okay, boxes of paper, I had the blowups and really I found myself presenting information to the jury the same way a teacher presented information to me back in third and fourth grade, before the internet, before any of this. I’m up there with the Elmo, it’s projecting things on the screen and I’ve got my blowups. And part of that was it’s driven by fear, because I know despite your rain story, that pad of paper’s never going to go away. It’s never going to fail to turn on, it’s never going to give me additional stress when I’m standing up there in front of a jury trying to do something. When you’re doing this, in the beginning did you bring a tech guy into the courtroom to handle any of the hiccups that would happen during the presentation or were you doing that all yourself in the beginning?

Kyle Newman:

That’s a great question Stan. And with what you would do, that’s how most of us were taught how to do this stuff. The great trial attorneys, when I was coming up, when you were coming up, that’s how we learned to present a case and go into trial and present evidence. I also had a really terrible experience with a trial tech guy who initially I had come to court and it was literally I was fighting the guy the entire time. I’m like, “Pull this up. Oh I have this.” It was this back and forth where I was totally out of control of the manner in which the evidence was presented because this guy was never going to think as fast as I was on the fly about a case that he was never going to know nearly as much about as I had preparing for it, in a med mal for months and months, not working on the case for years.

The really amazing thing about the setup that I use and the program that I use, which is ExhibitView, which still, most people have not heard of, I stumbled across it. ExhibitView is a company out of Georgia, they’re outside of Atlanta. And ExhibitView was really created, Bob Finnell, who was a former, I believe Georgia State Trial Lawyer’s President who was amazing guy and their co-creator, Bill Roach, who was more of the tech side of it. They created it together to really have the trial lawyer be able to use it all yourself. Really it’s about having a setup that you’re comfortable with, which really these days is fairly simple. You can go crazy. This last trial I had, I had multiple computers set up and actually multiple projectors set up. But it really comes down to three things.

You need your laptop, you need it hooked up to a projector, it’s something called a long throw projector, which is something bright enough it’s typically over 6,000 lumens, that’s bright enough to literally light up a drive-in movie theater if I wanted to with all the lights on in the courtroom. That’s really important. I don’t have to worry about some court officer who’s not going to dim the lights for me because how many times has that happened where they don’t want to do anything that I suggest or ask, please put the shades down. You really have to be autonomous with this. It’s the projector, your laptop and a screen. That’s pretty much it. I’ve had occasions where the screen didn’t quite fit in the area, in the well between the witness and the jurors, where I just lit up the entire wall of a courtroom and it was like a drive-in movie theater.

Those are really the three components. These days, laptops I find are much more reliable. But I will tell you that I think 2020 was the last time I had used the same exact computer, the same laptop, and the same projector for 10 years straight. A 100 trials, starting trials, verdicts, whatever, but 10 years of intense trial work. And it lasted me the entire time, really without a hitch. I really didn’t even need to replace it. But it was to the point where the laptop was so ancient. It was actually one of the first touchscreen laptops. I thought I’d be cool busting out the touchscreen, but it never really worked. But just a good reliable laptop. And this software, which is Exhibit View, which I use, the only catch with it is it doesn’t work on Mac, it’s just for PC.

I know that there’s other stuff out there. There’s TrialPad and Trial Director. There were some other programs out there when I first started that I kind of experimented with. There was one by Lexis, I forget what. But the bottom line is, the other programs that I’ve experienced, are just so much more complicated to set up and to really use that you almost need a trial tech person to come with you, which is something also, you could spend a few thousand bucks on that guy, which is something I would rather put back into a crazy demonstrative or a 3D model or so something like that, which to me is money better spent for a trial and it’s less aggravation for me. But it’s really just your preference. And I think at the end of the day, as long as you’re using this stuff, you’re going to give yourself a big advantage because of how people learn and how people consume information now. What do we all do?

We’re on our phones all day, we’re all visual learners. There’s a million studies out there that you could look up that talk about visual learning combined with auditory learning, how much more you comprehend. It’s something like 75% more comprehension and people want to be entertained at trial. Trials can be flat out boring. You want to take a case and make it as exciting as possible. I think that adds to the overall value of cases, a tremendous amount. I’ve tried everything from 25 policies to multimillion-dollar cases and it enhances the value on each and every one of them. And you can use them on every single case. You don’t have to wait for the big one where you’re going to say, “Okay, I’m going to spend five grand on all these blow ups. I can use it for zero cost on every case and make it demonstrative out of anything.

Matt Dolman:

This has to be blowing Stan’s mind. Stan, he’s a hell of a trial attorney, one of my best friends. But Stan, you sent me a text on Friday, he was traveled to New York City that it was so refreshing for him to be able to go paperless, right, Stan?

Stan Gipe:

Oh yeah.

Matt Dolman:

I’m not calling you a dinosaur. I think it’s written on your forehead. We would need some help to making this transition to using trial technology to bring our cases more to light. But going back a second, how do you do a recall during when you have thousands of documents, how do you find that one specific document, that one instant when you actually need it? Is that an issue or how do you index all of your documents?

Kyle Newman:

Basically it’s copious preparation, like you would always do. I’m sure Stan, you prepare outlines for trial, you outline your depositions and your medical records, really go through everything that’s in evidence and just make sure that it’s scanned in, in the same way that it would be prepared. In New York, we have all of our subpoenaed records that have to get sent to the subpoenaed record room and I’ll spend a day or two with my portable scanner. Yeah, I love doing this. This is one of my favorite things to do. And just rock out with my headphones on and just scan in all of the records so I know exactly what’s there, how it comes in. I know a big challenge with medical records is you could request a medical record and it’s going to come in 10 different ways and 10 different times you request it.

That’s really important, having whatever’s going into evidence so that you know exactly what page number it’s coming in. And then you basically bait stamp your own copy so that when you’re doing your notes, I do it like 08., whatever line, so if it’s a deposition, it’s page 8, line 25 or line 11. And the same thing with medical records. If you prep and the records, you know yourself for any case, you’re going to be okay. And really with this system, it’s as simple as just clicking page 27, just putting in two seven and it’s up. The other great thing about the Exhibit View software is nothing goes up until you press, there’s a projector button so you can set up your screen, no one’s seeing it. You have your platform in front of you and all they’re seeing is the record that you project and then display.

And I’ve crucified doctors. It’s been absurd frankly, because once a jury… The other thing is even if you’re putting up a piece of paper, the jury’s not really seeing that. You may be able to read it into the record what it says, but they’re not seeing it blown up so that a nine-foot screen, it’s all the doctor wrote in his progress note or his history, that he’s trying to give you the courtroom medicine excuse for. It’s really powerful. And I think anyone who’s a great trial lawyer works hard, is going to have already the tools to do it. You just got to take the plunge and get over the tech hurdle that we all have in our minds.

Stan Gipe:

And I can tell you that too, half the prep is, a small portion is building your own case and then a large portion of its trying to figure out what the defense is going to do and prepare for how they’re going to use this record and what I think they may use, what they may not, so having it scanned in, would be invaluable. In the past I’ve had to rely on a service that does this and it’s extremely, extremely expensive. But I will tell you, part of the reason I myself look at doing this stuff is, there’s a trial and a case is never finite, it’s never settled. That number is never fixed.

There’s a lot of times someone in there on the day of trial when you’re setting up in the courtroom with authority to resolve that case. And it’s not necessarily about getting the verdict as much as it is about convincing that person with the money that you’re going to get the verdict. They then approach and say, “Hey, now we’d like to talk to you about that reasonable offer we’ve been holding back this whole time. Now that we see you’re willing to actually punch the bully and you look credible doing it, we want to talk to you about settlement.” Let me ask you, do you notice that happening much when you get into court and they go, “Oh crap, this guy’s ready to go.”

Kyle Newman:

Medical malpractice work is funny. I think there’s a certain degree that some of these older big time partners or whatever you want to call them are kind of stunned, especially when they’re going up against someone who’s younger. That I think for young attorneys to incorporate this, really just boosts your overall presentation and your overall credibility. I have always said this, I don’t know where I learned this, but I think it’s proven true, is that the most credible attorney is going to win. I could bark and yell and say a million things at trial, but if I’m not backing it up with cold facts that are clear and easy to understand, I’m not going to win because I’m not credible. I’m not making a credible argument at trial. And I think with this, yes, it does put pressure on the other side, it certainly has. But for me, for the med mal stuff that I go to trial for, they’re pretty much going all the way or settling very late in the game, and it might be just being in New York.

Matt Dolman:

To add a caveat to what Stan asked, it’s comparing auto to med mal, so autos a little different. Med mal, 70% of the time they end up in defense verdicts to begin with, they’re just such tough cases.

Kyle Newman:

True and they’d rather roll the dice a lot of the times, just banking on the fact that maybe we’re going to get a jury that’s not favorable or it’s going to be too over their head. You got a venue that’s tough on plaintiffs. It’s a tough racket. I just lost a trial that was over three weeks, whole presentation and you win some, you lose some. But you got to just go into every case preparing the same way, right, Stan? If you set the bar the same for every case you’re going to prep, you’re going to get ready, the same level, it’s all going to even out. Some of the cases we’ll settle, some of them midway maybe, and some of them you’ll be set up for a great verdict.

Matt Dolman:

Do you focus group these presentations?

Kyle Newman:

I focus group on anyone that will listen to me. For a formal focus group, to be honest, I’ve never done that, coming from a smaller practice, where I’ve kind of learned most of this stuff on my own to be honest. But my focus group is the dinner table. I get my in-laws on the line. My mom will be very critical about these types of cases. She’s good because she’s always on the defense side for whatever reason, especially with the malpractice stuff. But I think that’s a good way to do it. And that’s also a good way to just talk out your certain points that you might think are super valuable and super important. But other people might be pump the brakes there that that’s kind of rubbing me the wrong way, Stan, because we’re so involved in these cases and we know them so well, that we’re in our own mind and with our own train of thought. And it is, it’s so important to get outside opinions at least every once in a while, to help guide how you present for a case and how you come across for a jury.

Matt Dolman:

Any pushback from any judges and any specific venues or technology?

Kyle Newman:

Yeah, so the other thing that that’s great about the setup is that it’s very easy to move around. And what I’ll do is I always make a point, I guess every venue is different and every courthouse is different. What I’ll have is I used to have to come with these old school plugs, like the Bronx Courthouse, whereas where I primarily practice, my entire career, is a very old school, not tech savvy at all courthouse. And I used to have to come with these two-pronged plugs that would adapt to the wall just so I knew that my setup would work. Whereas in federal court, it’s so tech savvy that they will have most of the stuff already there. The good thing about it is you’re using a portable projector too. Recently I found the most amazing, it rolls up, this projector. It’s like a little sling, it’s very easy to travel with and you can set it up really anywhere.

It’s very fluid. I make sure to let the judge know, so the judge feels like they’re a part of it and these days they see it so much, it’s pretty common. I haven’t ever had a all out ,objection to it. The only thing that rubs me the wrong way is I’ll put up my whole setup and then the defense attorney who has nothing there will say, “Oh, put up that page of the…” like I’m working for them now. And then I’ll just say, “It doesn’t work that way buddy. I have to set it up a certain way. I can’t really do that in court,” which is total BS, I just don’t want to be working for them while I’m in court. But that’s one thing that, you can see it come up. And I’ve had judges push to actually do that because some judges feel like it’s one-sided if you’re doing this presentation and then the other attorney is just holding up the piece of paper. But I always push back.

Matt Dolman:

They create their own peril by not preparing that way. Why should you be responsible for that?

Kyle Newman:

Yeah, right, of course. That’s what I say. And this past trial, the one that I lost, but I thought we made a great case, it was a very difficult surgical error case and this was a big shot defense attorney who had no, it was like a tech five-year-old, it was almost pathetic with the tech setup that they had and asking me to do all this stuff. I think it just comes down to the credibility and your overall presentation. If you’re going to wow these jurors, which I think that they expect more and more these days, you got to do stuff like this.

Matt Dolman:

Are you noticing more engagement?

Kyle Newman:

Yes. That’s the other thing, it’s all about engagement. Whether it’s marketing stuff that you’re doing, whether it’s presentation, evidence stuff, it’s all about keeping people engaged so they’re not snoozing and sleeping through the most important parts of your case. This is really all about engagement. And think about where a juror is. You’re asked to come to court, you’re asked to sit in a jury box for hours upon hours on end. You can’t interact with anyone, you can’t ask questions, you can’t even talk to the other jurors about the case. You’re instructed not to do so, so you almost need that outlet to feel like you’re part of something.

And I feel like this overwhelmingly. There’s stuff on YouTube that I found of old videos of people talking about trial tech from the late eighties, nineties, I want to say, where jurors were so elated by it. And it’s the same response now that they always, I make it a point, I don’t know if you do this Stan, but I’m sure you have in the past, is to talk to your jurors after every case. That’s one of the big highlights for them always. That they love this, love the setup and made it a lot easier for them to understand the case.

Stan Gipe:

Yeah, we’re not allowed to actually go out and proactively contact our jurors. We have to ask-

Kyle Newman:

Even afterwards?

Stan Gipe:

Yeah, even afterwards, after they’ve been released, we got to ask the judge to send them something asking them to contact us.

Kyle Newman:

Is that right? You can’t even talk to them out on the courthouse steps outside?

Stan Gipe:

No.

Kyle Newman:

Really? Wow.

Stan Gipe:

You can stand out there looking lonely and if they approach you, you can engage in conversation but you can’t approach them and initiate conversation about anything.

Kyle Newman:

Wow. I’ve had jurors slam the door in my face, close the elevator on me. But look, if you can do it, if you’re in a state that you can, I think it’s also very really valuable too, because you’ll pick up things, even little annoying mannerisms that you might do that tick jurors off, that’ll help you at least train a little bit better or try to eliminate those annoying tendencies in court.

Matt Dolman:

How much does it cost? Soup to nuts incorporating the technology. We’re going to start doing this in our trials. What does it cost to bring all this technology in?

Kyle Newman:

I just did a little presentation on this and I was going through just on Amazon, just playing around, I was able to find a long throw projector. Back in the day, 10 years ago, this Dell projector I had, which lasted me about 10 years, was around $2,000. Today, I want to say you can get it for 50 bucks or there were deals for long throw projectors, many of them under 100 bucks. Let’s say if you wanted a more brand name, I guess. You could get it easily in the 200 range for the projector. For the laptop, most of us have already, the trial software is very, very reasonable. There’s a one-time fee and then it’s a yearly fee. And the projector screen that I just got was also I think around 150 bucks. All in, you’re talking clearly under a thousand, you could probably do it all in for under 500. And then what I would also recommend-

Matt Dolman:

And we’ve all spent thousands upon thousands in demonstrative aid, so yeah, that’s nothing.

Kyle Newman:

You could spend that, triple that, on just a trial technician and blowups for the trial, easily.

Matt Dolman:

Yeah, I tried a case in Pinellas County where I spent over $15,000 just on the visual aids itself, just to the trial.

Kyle Newman:

And that’s what I was saying before is that even for small cases, that’s also the value. Stan, when you have a lot of cases coming up for trial, you have to prioritize. And depending on the ultimate value of the case, you might have to restrict what you’re spending. On a $50,000 policy case, you’re not going to spend $25,000 on demonstratives because it doesn’t leave enough at the end. This also helps to always maximize the value of the case, while also you’re saving yourself, thousands upon thousands, each case. And that’s also the incredible advantage for it. Plus it allows you to be more creative and push your boundaries. And it’s really fun. Once you get in the zone and once you’re flowing with it in court, there’s nothing better to me.

Matt Dolman:

Stan, we need to make the change.

Kyle Newman:

Stan. I’m ready, anytime man.

Stan Gipe:

Here’s the thing. Believe it or not, my last three trials, except for the last one we’ve had, I’ve had the tech guy there doing stuff just because you feel like you’re sort of lost without it. But I’ve never bought anything and I’m telling you, the tech guy’s going to be a $5,000 a day bill, when you get in here, plus the equipment rental and stuff like that. We’ve done it somewhat down here, but having a command of it and being more comfortable with it when you’re in the courthouse, that I think would be invaluable because I’ve had more of the experience you’ve had where, I’m trying to get this guy to bring up a record. It’s a record he didn’t know that he was going to be bringing up. And I’m back there flipping through a paper file going, “No, it’s this one, this one.” And he’s finding it, and it doesn’t go across smooth. It doesn’t seem like a nice fluid presentation. It seems like you’re listening to a record and it’s a few skips on the song and people just don’t like it as much.

Kyle Newman:

Right, exactly. So many times I’ve had where a doctor or a witness, I’ve had police officers try to give me BS. I’ve had just plain witnesses, one construction case standing out to me. But there’ll be so many times that where someone says, “Oh hey, there’s this in the record. And then two lines down, it’s another statement that supports your side where the jury just wouldn’t be able to see it. They’re just reading off of a piece of paper. And that is also just the power. If you know chart, I think that’s the most important thing. And then just start experimenting with it. I used to, what I did initially was I painted a wall, I had dark walls in my office, I painted a wall white and I set up the projector and I just started playing with it.

And for any cases that I had, had my little projector on my desk and I just got it. But I’m telling you, Stan, the software itself is so intuitive and easy to use. You’ll pick it up in half an hour. There’s not really much to teach, the basics, I’m talking. And the software also has, if you guys do heavy video depositions, which New York just doesn’t do, I know a lot of states out there will have video depositions for all of their experts. It has a video function where you can sync the deposition transcript, which I have used in the past, which is also incredibly powerful, because what’s better than getting them on camera, lying about something, we just don’t have it that much in New York.

I’m really focused just on the records and the chart and it makes it just more fun and engaging for everyone, I think, when you’re able to just rip through a huge medical record, pull out all the really juicy stuff, so that it follows just a timeline in your mind that makes sense for everyone. Obviously I’m the biggest fan of this stuff ever.

Yeah, it has been. Definitely. Absolutely. I’ll tell you one example-

Stan Gipe:

It’s your calling card.

Kyle Newman:

I had my-

Stan Gipe:

Your next level playing field for you.

Kyle Newman:

… first million dollar plus verdict in Brooklyn. It was a orthopedic malpractice case where my client had an osteochondral fracture after an ACL tear. ACL tear is a high tension, high force injury. And my client, it sheered off a piece of bone inside of his knee. And this doctor did not take out the piece of bone during the surgery, which ended up, my client developed a DVT from it and a PE, had a whole mess of… He had a partial stroke. It was a whole thing. And while the jury was deliberating, the tech literally won the case for me. While the jury was deliberating, they asked if the attorney for the plaintiff could put back up the MRI slice that he was talking about from the MRI on the screen.

And while the jury was still out, I put up the screen, I put it on as bright as humanly possible, set it all up, and you could see clearly on this one slice that my expert pointed out, where the piece of bone, you could see it clearly just on the tip of, it was off to the side on the MRI. And really a normal person would’ve just overlooked it. But when you saw it on the screen blown up, it literally won the case for me. My trial technician’s long gone at that point during deliberations, if they’re asking me to put up an MRI or a CT scan, that’s going to be a tough thing to do. I used to out a laptop. I used to have this radiologist who’d come with the white box where the light box or whatever that thing is, and pass around his laptop for the jurors to look. But in this case, you have a 10-foot screen, win a case and that certainly has for me.

Matt Dolman:

Stan, are you believer now? Are we going to convert? Or we no longer dinosaurs? Because I put myself in the same basket there.

Stan Gipe:

Well, here’s the thing.

Kyle Newman:

Just give it a shot.

Stan Gipe:

It’s not being adverse to the technology, it’s moving up the learning curve on how to use it yourself versus being able to point to someone and say, “Hey, put that up.” Having a command of it yourself makes you much more comfortable with everything and being, like I say, they’re in deliberations, when the guy’s out of the room, knowing how to work, knowing how things are stored, there’s just an extra layer of confidence there that when you stand up, that it’s going to work even if he’s screwing up.

Kyle Newman:

One thing I would say is, and I’ve thought about that a lot, is your comfort level of using this stuff. And I think for people who’ve done it, the old school way, versus people that are kind of learning, especially how to cross-examine, either a doctor or a witness. To me, it actually simplifies the process an incredible amount because when you have the technology up and you just put up a page in the chart and you enlarge whatever it is that you want to talk about, whether it’s a part of the police report, part of a radiology report, medical record, whatever. Everyone is just focused on that. And I think at trial, one of the real art forms of a great trial attorney is being able to take your pad, put the pad down, and actually talk a human being and converse almost with your witness.

And when you have it up, it really just focuses, the whole line of questioning, it allows you to leave all your notes aside and just focus on that one thing and whatever your goal is or whatever you want to accomplish with that piece of evidence, that’s just to me. I get it though, Stan, it could be a scary thing, especially if you’ve been successful and been doing something a certain way for so long, it can be tough to change. All I’d say is give it a shot. It’s really not. The cost certainly shouldn’t be prohibitive of trying it out.

Matt Dolman:

No, its money saved. It’s money well spent. I think we’re going to fly you down for a free vacation to teach us this.

Kyle Newman:

Sure. We’ll do the whole firm.

Matt Dolman:

Because between Stan and we have trouble.

Stan Gipe:

All right, Matt, you’ve got a lot of technology.

Kyle Newman:

Matt is so tech savvy.

Matt Dolman:

I know search engine optimization of digital marketing, but I don’t really understand technology per se and how to put things together in devices. I think that’s where I fall off a little bit.

Kyle Newman:

Yeah, you know what, I guess I’ve always been a handy guy. Always love puzzles and putting together stuff and building stuff, so that’s definitely helped. And I think if you just see someone do it one time and just have a reference, I think you’ll see it these days especially. It’s literally you’re plugging one thing in. You just got to set up your projector on a little… There’s also these things I get on Amazon, they’re like little portable stools. I could put the projector down, set up my stool, set up my screen, it’s three minutes to set up this thing and I’m ready to go. I’ve done it at mediations, I’ve brought it for arbitrations. And the cool stuff is this stuff actually works virtually, where you can project your screen and use it the same way, where let’s say you’re deposing a witness or you have a virtual trial or something, you can actually set it up with it in an extended monitor, where it behaves the same exact way as it would in trial. Basically your monitor is that projector screen.

Matt Dolman:

Wow, this is mind blown. I’m used to trying it the old fashioned way, same as Stan, so this is something completely new to me.

Kyle Newman:

Yeah. But it’s so funny that for 10, 12 years, its been the same. This is one of the rare areas where there’s been so little progression in a field of legal practice. I feel like, that its just mind blowing to me where. And also the technology hasn’t changed that much, that that’s why it’s awesome is that it’s very simple to use. It’s not complicated at all. And you can learn it quick.

Matt Dolman:

I spent a lot of time watching courtroom video news. I don’t know if you ever watched that before. You can watch trials in real times, some of the best trial lawyers in the country. And yeah, I’ll tell you, it’s rarely used by even the best technicians out there. You’ll see Lanier, Lanier does a lot on some of his big mass tour bellwether cases. He’ll blow up these demonstrative aids and pretty much do what you do, bring the story to light where very few attorneys do that. And I think that’s an arc that could easily be improved and it would obviously captivate the people who are viewing it.

Kyle Newman:

Yeah. One other thing I just want to add is that I see attorneys that will use PowerPoint or something that is a linear presentation tool, which is great for let’s say an opening statement or a closing argument, where it’s controlled, where no one’s interrupting you, you don’t have to think on the fly. You don’t have to change, it’s basically a scripted presentation. Whereas why this is so amazing is that let’s say I’m using a PowerPoint for a witness. The second that the witness deviates from my pre-planned sequence of evidence, I’m totally screwed. And I’ve tried this, I tried it in the beginning and it completely throws you off. You can’t think. And then your whole setup is totally screwed. That’s why with the trial tech, it doesn’t matter where the witness goes, because you can go anywhere with them, because your entire case file is demonstrative. Every single piece of paper in that file, every medical record, every exhibit, is demonstrative, without spending any money.

Matt Dolman:

And it’s seamless.

Kyle Newman:

And it’s seamless.

Matt Dolman:

And it’s plug and play.

Kyle Newman:

Yeah.

Matt Dolman:

You’ve got to the point where it’s plug and play.

Kyle Newman:

Yeah. And nowadays, it’s so cheap, like I said, you get a projector for 50 bucks.

Matt Dolman:

Stan, we need to do this. I’ll have you wrap it up, Stan.

Stan Gipe:

All right, I’m on board.

Kyle Newman:

Let’s do it.

Stan Gipe:

All right. Thanks for coming out and talking to us, because we usually get a little bit type a different presentation than this. And the technology’s so fascinating, a little outside of our field of expertise. Kyle, thanks for coming out. We really appreciate it. I guess this has been another episode of the David vs. Goliath Podcast and we appreciate it.

Kyle Newman:

You got it guys. My pleasure.