Can Lawyers Use Data Well?

on
(thanks to toonpool.com)

My friend, Peter Lederer, sent me a picture--an infographic to be precise--that compares three phones with entertaining and useful visual cues.

Lawyers have to handle complex data in big transactions and especially in litigation. They don't receive any training in this. William Twining in his work on evidence has developed Wigmore's evidence charts which is now beginning to catch on.

On the whole lawyers don't know what to do. This was brought home to me when I saw a graphic claiming to explain who was suing who in the mobile business:
This is incomprehensible. And worse than useless.

Can it be done better? Yes, it can be turned into a thing of beauty. Look here:
It makes perfect sense without struggle or incipient myopia.

With so much data flying around us these days, we need to know how to handle it and present it in meaningful ways. David McCandless, as I've mentioned before, is one such visionary. Watch him talk at TED:

Comments

John Flood said…
Wheels within wheels...It turns out that Peter Lederer's father worked for the Viennese statistician, economist, philosopher, Otto Neurath, who more or less devised the infograph. You can see these delightful and useful images at Designboom.
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