Using Projectors to Make Your (Power)Point

When it is appropriate to use a computer slide-show? According to Brian Taugher of the attorney general's office, presentations can be valuable aids in group training, firm marketing to potential clients, personal injury cases in court before a jury, mediations, and meetings with opposing counsel (especially large numbers of them). Presentations can allow you to show your side of the story without interruptions and perhaps provide answers before a question is posed in a hostile way.

Laptops hooked up to an LCD Projector can be used to show presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint, Corel Presentations, or other software programs, to show DVDs, video clips, enlarged document scans, charts, photos, or to play voice files. Remember the video of Bill Gates in deposition? When shown to opposing counsel, damaging evidence such as this might hasten settlement. Despite technical evidentiary problems, many things seem to "get by" when shown as a PowerPoint presentation. People (including judges, juries, and opposing counsel) can be "lulled" while watching presentation, drifting in couch potato passivity, allowing the media to pass into their brains without critical analysis.

Projectors cost around four to six thousand dollars new, and the key components to look for when shopping are the brightness (lumens) and the weight. A one thousand lumens bulb will allow you to run the presentation without turning off the lights, (which tempts the audience to take a nap). If you only use a projector in your conference room, then the weight won't matter a lot, but if you travel with your projector, you'll soon notice every single ounce. A laptop on one arm, the projector on the other - saving a pound or two will be worth some extra money up front. Bulbs themselves cost about $350 each. So maybe you don't want to buy a projector right away. Commercial establishments rent them for $300-350 per day. But wait! SLUG members can rent SLUG's own projector for only $25 per day — a great membership benefit.

After lining up your projector, you'll need to set it up. You may want to keep an extra three-prong extension cord around, since projector cords are notorious for not reaching that outlet across the room. After inserting the plugs marked "computer" or "projector" into the ports similarly marked, and hooking up the electricity, Brian suggests turning the projector on before the laptop so that the laptop picks up the projector first off. Other alternatives include rebooting the laptop later or setting your laptop to "sleep" mode while not in use. On many laptops, the separate Function key plus either F4 or F5 (depending on model) will toggle the visuals from Laptop Only, to Laptop plus Screen, to Screen Only, enabling you to set up your presentation without your first visual displaying on the wall in the eternal beforehand. Check the toggles if you suddenly see the projection on the wall but not on your laptop monitor.

Equipment set up; you're ready to PowerPoint. No, I'm not pushing Microsoft, it's just that PowerPoint has become as innocuous in presentation language as Kleenex is to tissue — it has also become a verb: I Xerox, you PowerPoint. Brian explained that the secret of a good presentation depends on the skill of the presenter, and reading a bunch of slides won't cut it before an audience. Moving around the room, changing the tone of one's voice, and some large key words on the screen will get through to more audience members than cutesy graphics, lots of small print, and annoying music.

Brian's Do's and Don'ts

• Don't read your PowerPoint presentation to the audience. Use key words in your slides and have the supplementing information in your talk.
• Do use handouts, printing slides or (even better) a textual outline to accommodate different learning types.
• Don't forget your role as a speaker. Walk around; vary vocal tones and volume.
• Do have staff assist in the design and creation of your presentation. You may have people in your office with a "knack" for the perfect transition — don't blow 400 billable hours trying to find the right graphic if others can find them quicker for you.
• Don't use small fonts or use too many fonts. Better to stick to one or two fonts, in large sizes, and have people be able to read your presentation from the back of the room. Slides shouldn't have more than seven lines of text on them in order to be seen.
• Do run through your presentation a few times at home on the same laptop and the same projector you intend to use on the "big day."
• Don't turn out the lights. The audience can sleep on their own time.
• Do buy a book. One lucky March SLUG luncheon attendee won PowerPoint for Litigators by the National Institute for Trial Advocacy (NITA).