The Litigation Section of The Jacksonville Bar Association has had a busy agenda this fiscal year.
In addition to the numerous meetings, lunch-and-learns and other gatherings by the committees, the Litigation Section organized and hosted the following Bar-wide events in 2012:
• E-Service Rules Review in August.
• E-Discovery Rules Review in October.
• The Raymond Ehrlich Trial Advocacy Seminar in November.
The agenda for 2013 includes the following primary events:
• Attorney's Fee Seminar from 1:30–5 p.m. April 4. This event will be presented by James Hauser, Florida's preeminent expert on the topic. For $100, JBA members will learn practical information on this revenue-generating, client-benefiting topic. As with the Trial Advocacy Seminar in the fall, our aim is to provide not only worthwhile seminars, but also certification CLE hours for those who attend. We expect The Florida Bar approval for four hours of ethics and three hours of certification in civil trial, business litigation and construction law, based on The Florida Bar's CLE approval for the more condensed version of this same seminar. Registrations are being accepted on the JBA's website.
• Annual Mediator CME from 9 a.m.–4:30 p.m. May 30. We are pleased to continue to provide our local mediators with the opportunity to obtain all of their CME requirements without having to leave Jacksonville. This annual seminar, led by the tireless Jake Schickel, provides eight CME hours, including four in ethics, two in domestic violence and one in diversity. For the past several years, this event also has obtained Florida Bar approval for eight general CLE hours. Please stay tuned for further details.
Perhaps the most popular of the Litigation Section's events this year is the "Tour of the Courthouse Evidence Cart."
Organized by Vice Chair Eric Kolar and presented by Court Technology Officer Mike Smith, this event has given many of us a preview of what our new, 21st century courthouse has available in its courtrooms. For the bulk of you who have not yet taken the "tour," here's what awaits you in our new courthouse.
Each of the courtrooms has monitors at counsel tables, in the jury box, at the witness stand and at the judge's bench. These monitors work in conjunction with the evidence carts.
While there are not evidence carts in each courtroom, the courthouse now has an ample supply of the evidence carts, nearly eliminating the chances of having them all in use in any given trial week.
To reserve an evidence cart for your next trial, please contact Mike Smith at [email protected] or (904) 962-4599.
The evidence cart provides multiple ways for a lawyer to present evidence, such as images, documents or videos.
Each cart has an ELMO, an overhead document camera that works like a transparency projector but with regular (opaque) documents.
Alternatively, evidence can be presented through your own electronic device – either notebook or tablet.
Lastly, you can save your evidence on a flash drive and use the computer on the evidence cart.
With either method, the evidence can be projected on all, or selected, monitors in the courtroom. The lawyer can be preparing to show the next image, document or video in a "test view" mode, so that it is only displayed on the monitor attached to the cart, to be published by the lawyer once it is to his or her liking.
Because the courthouse is fully Wi-Fi connected, the evidence you plan to use can be pulled from cyberspace in real time.
Trial lawyers can now use online videos in the courtroom, such as educational surgical videos that many doctors post to their own websites.
Better still is the fact that all of this evidence is interactive.
The monitors at the witness stand and on the evidence cart telestrate, allowing people at either station to identify or annotate in different colors anything of significance that is being shown on the monitor.
You want your eyewitness to identify where he was standing in relation to the event in question? Let them simply use their finger to circle, on their witness-stand monitor, the area of the map or photograph being published.
While there may be tactical benefits to using the traditional foam boards, this new technology has eliminated the need for such and has greatly reduced a major expense to trial work.
Smith has put together a four-page FAQ sheet about the evidence cart, which is available online at coj.net.
He also has invited any litigators to come by and "test run" the equipment and cart the week before your trials, so that you can become more acquainted and comfortable with it and its interaction with whatever device you intend to use.
The building at 501 W. Adams St. is not your father's courthouse.
It is a cutting-edge facility that opens new doors to the 21st century litigator. We are blessed to finally have it.