I've always handled my voir dire without a slideshow. Now that our courtrooms have Smartboards, I'm thinking about using PowerPoint.

However, I've never seen someone use PowerPoint in voir dire so I'm unsure how to use it .

Do you use Powerpoint or something similar? What is your advice to make the presentation work? Voir Dire can be dynamic with panel members talking about topics that don't follow the order of your outline - how do you handle that?

Also - would you mind linking your presentation or e-mailing the presentation - my e-mail is daarf@co.potter.tx.us. I would rather not reinvent the wheel.

Thanks

It can be a very valuable tool during voir dire. The benefits are obvious: Visual aids, pictures, elements charts, definitions. The drawback as I have experienced it is a lack of flexibility in your presentation. The Powerpoint formula is great then if you have a "lecture" type voir dire planned or just use it for the very basics, like elements and definitions. A great advantage I've used it for are scaled questions in my voir dires. "Rate DWI is a serious offense from one to ten with 1 being not very serious to 10 being very serious..." A visual representation of these type questions help jurors, from my experience. I'll see if I can round up a few presentations....

It was a pleasure speaking with you today, GP. I'd be interested in what you have as well, although I generally do not use pp during vd.

Great to talk to you, Greg. You help run a great office over there. I just sent a few presentations to both of you. Our juries seemed to respond well. Hopefully yours will too....

Abdul:

Sent you a couple of examples of PP that I have used in voir dire.

Hope they help.

Thanks for sending the PowerPoints over, it gives me a good feel for how these presentations should look like.

I use it. Make sure you have a wireless device to change the slides. Make sure you know your slides backwards and forwards so you do not have to look at them. Do not let it stop you from talking to the jury. Be ready for defense objections, older judges do not like the photos, and sometimes make me remove some of them.