It's "Lights, Camera, Action" for Seminar's top Attorneys

Few legal seminars evoke laughter and tears, but that's just what happened at a recent CBA presentation on the use of demonstrative video evidence.

"Lights, Camera, Action: The Do's and Don'ts of Videos as Demonstrative Evidence" played to a packed audience at The John Marshall Law School in January, with everyone braving the first blizzard of 1997 to attend.

Personal injury attorney Robert Clifford moderated and spoke at the three-hour seminar , being dubbed the "father" of "talkie" videos in the courtroom by his off-time opponent, fellow speaker E. Michael Kelly of Hinshaw and Culbertson.

Clifford, partner at Clifford Law Offices, explained his use of videos in the last 10 years in his successful palintiff's practice - from the "day-in-the-life" video of a child struck by a public bus where a jury awarded him $24 million to a progressive video demonstrating the medical progress of a survivor of the Sioux City, Iowa crash where he won a record $28.2 million verdict for a 71-year-old woman.

The tapes Clifford showed of these people struggling with ordinary day-to-day tasks were emotional, even bringing tears to the most experienced of lawyers. On the other hand, Mindy Chapman of Much Shelist Freed Denenberg Ament Bell & Rubenstein, P.C., turned to vintage footage from a comedy series that had some of the audience members laughing out loud as she enhanced her presentation of the case law.

"The demographics of America are changing, and how we as people want to receive our information and how we want to process that information is changing as rapidly as the technology that you read about", Clifford said, with technology in the courtroom being a mere outgrowth of the use of technology in other professions and in everyday life. "Now, you send them to the movies and they focus on this stuff."

Kelly agreed. "We are a television generation. Juries, particularly in the 'post-O.J. era', actually seem to like video evidence depositions more than live witnesses," Kelly said.