Excerpted from The Washington Post TECH-WORKING
: Animators at Law Inc. a trial
exhibit and high-end litigation support firm.
Released MAY 5, 2004
Animators at Law
Address: 814 King St., 2nd Floor, Alexandria, VA 22314
Phone: 703-548-1799
Website: www.animators.com
Industry: Litigation support and trial exhibits
Founded: 1995
How to submit your résumé: Mail to address above.
Monday, May 3, 2004; Page E05
Animators at Law Inc. plans to hire about 15 people during the year.
Ken Lopez, president and chief executive, talked with The Post's Andrea
Caumont.
Article excerpt only, see full article here:
What does your company
do?
Imagine you find yourself on a jury and it's a case between two Fortune
500 companies, a fight over a patented pharmaceutical. There's no way
that you or any other juror is going to come in with a background knowledge
on how that works. With other types of technology, it's the same story.
It's incredibly complex material. And yet you're going to be asked to
render this decision and hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake.
We help to make it easier by giving some background on what jurors need
to understand. We translate complex and boring subject matter into interesting
and understandable concepts using computer animation and trial exhibits.
We're educators and advocates. We're working for one side of the case
only. First we educate and then we persuade. We've created trial exhibits
[big posters essentially] and computer animation that creates a mini-Discovery
Channel type of presentation for a jury to watch. That's how so many
of us learn things now. The natural lawyer instinct is to talk it through.
Jurors are a different creature, they want to see it. We're an art studio
at our core, one third lawyers, two thirds artists, and a high-end boutique
consulting firm.
What do you
think your employees would say were the best reasons for working at
your company?
Definitely the culture. It's a schizophrenic culture, both super professional
and super goofy. That might be somewhat reflective of how I think. The
kind of work we do is very serious, high-stakes stuff. Because of the
way lawyers work -- 24/7, every weekend, every holiday -- we find ourselves
matching some of those schedules. We work very hard and we play very
hard. The number two reason is the work's fun. If you're a lawyer here,
you've probably left the practice of law, which wasn't much fun for
whatever reason. You could work for five years on a single trial, and
then the trial's three weeks long, and that's it. That's five years
of drudgery, paperwork and dry analysis for this three-week moment of
intense adrenaline and high stakes. We have the benefit of being in
trial all year long. The trial is the most exciting and rewarding part
of the business. We get to teach the jury things like how a power plant
works, or about environmental damage up in New England or lead pipes.
The artists here tend to be the intellectually curious types. We work
directly with scientific experts to help illustrate what they're opinion
is going to be.
End of article excerpt. To read the full article, please visit
the Washington
Post website:
Why Use Trial Exhibits
at all?
An average jury will be made up of a majority of
people who are visual learners. That is, they will want, at a deep psychological
level, to have information presented to them visually.
Most litigators are auditory learners who prefer
to teach orally. To them, it simply feels natural.
The problem created when these two groups communicate
with one another is easily appreciated: Litigators "say it"
and most jurors want to "see it." Fortunately, this problem
is also easily solved.
Animators helps to bridge the gap between the verbal
communicator and the visual learner.
To learn more about our demonstrative
evidence techniques, please contact:
Tanya S. Cunningham, JD
sales@animators.com
1.800.337.7697 ext 122
703.548.1799 ext 122
703.548.5450 (fax)
While most of our team is based in our Washington, DC headquarters,
local offices and relationships allow us to easily work in New York,
Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Texas, Florida & Philadelphia.
