If you were to recall your worst meal out, you can probably remember the restaurant and have a mental picture of swearing never to return to the scene of this digestive nightmare. Now, can you recall your worst continuing legal education (CLE) experience? In 1986, I attended a three hour ethics class at the Ramada Inn in downtown Akron taught by a retired law professor from the University of Akron. The professor read from his notes, never looked up at his audience, and talked in a monotone voice about cases that had absolutely no relevance to my practice as an assistant prosecutor. Unfortunately, no computers, no cellular phones and no reading material.
An hour into the presentation, Assistant Prosecutor Thomas Walters who was sitting next to me started tearing sheets of his legal pad into little pieces. I thought he was going crazy. Five minutes later he turned to me and said, “Phil, if I have to listen to this guy any longer, I am going to go nuts, let’s play a game of chess.” Mr. Walters had drawn a chess board on his legal pad and had creatively labeled those torn pieces of legal paper into chess pieces. We spent the remainder of the class playing a competitive game of chess. Fast forward thirty-five years, I am now a CLE speaker providing creative and entertaining CLE. I have done over a 150 presentations for thousands of prosecutors, police officers and attorneys. Your Bar Association is offering a number of my CLE webinar presentations, including The Tiger King Trial, Murder for Hire.
Why entertaining CLE?
When I first started doing CLE presentations for the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association in 2012, I would usually have at least 250 prosecutors attending the seminar. During a presentation on Arson by an Assistant Ohio State Fire Marshall, his PowerPoint consisted of various statutes and did not contain one photo of a fire scene or a film clip of a fire investigation. Instead, his entire talk was on the Ohio statutes that gave the state fire marshal jurisdiction to investigate fires. While he was speaking, I walked around the room and noticed that most of the prosecutors were looking at their phone or on their computer shopping, playing fantasy sports, or working on various cases.
I realized one essential point, if you cannot maintain the attention of your audience, you cannot effectively teach CLE. Therefore, whenever I start working on a new webinar, my first goal is to create an entertaining presentation to capture and keep the attention of my audience. As one attendee noted in his evaluation of the Tiger King CLE, “Entertaining excellent CLE on an interesting matter of recent publicity.” I have found that attorneys want to attend presentations that are both informative and entertaining.
Film clips are excellent teaching tools and make presentations entertaining.
It is estimated that sixty five percent of attendees are visual learners in that they retain what they see and not what they hear. One study found that after three days, a user retained only 10-20 percent of written or spoken information but almost sixty five percent of visual information. There is an old proverb, “What I hear, I forget; what I see, I remember; what I do, I understand.” I always use numerous film clips in my webinars to engage the attendees and spur discussions of various legal issues. In the Tiger King presentation, I use film clips to encourage attorneys to be better story tellers in the courtroom. We also examine film clips to determine whether there were any possible defenses in this case. Most importantly, attorneys like the entertainment value of the film clips and I find them to be a great teaching tool. An attorney commented on this webinar that, “I liked viewing this popular Netflix series through a legal lens and learning about different trial techniques and tactics based on the prosecution of Joseph Maldonado Passage.”
Attorneys like presentations that are interactive and engaging.
Whenever I do live CLE, about half of my presentation would be interacting with my audience. The title of my business is Interactive Presentations, with the motto, “Where Attorneys Get Engaged.” Every attorney comes to my webinar with experience from their law practice and my job is to get them to talk about their practice. An attendee summarized the Tiger King Webinar by stating, “The best part of the course was having engaging conversation with the presenter while the presentation was ongoing. This was a lovely surprise, and very insightful as to his additional questions, and the advice/comments provided by other attendees.”
As a prosecutor, I never had to persuade a client to take an offer from opposing counsel. However, I am able to engage my attendees on how they interact with their clients when discussing a negotiated settlement on a civil case. Further, many of the attorneys have great advice on how to prepare an expert witness. It is important that CLE speakers engage their audience in order that attorneys can learn from the experiences of others in their legal community. Further, attorneys love webinars that are interactive: “This was very interesting and fun. I loved that the presenter interacted with everyone in the chat and posed questions to us.”
The Tiger King Trial is an intriguing trial.
As an assistant Summit County (Ohio) Prosecutor for almost thirty years, I worked on some high profile cases including the Jeffrey Dahmer case. (Dahmer was raised near Akron and his first homicide was committed in Summit County.) The Tiger King trial is a fascinating trial based on the flamboyant nature of Joe Exotic, the exotic animals he displayed at his zoo and the thousands of hours of film documenting the rivalry between Joe and his nemesis, Carole Baskin. It is extremely rare where a real life crime is captured on film.
Further, many of the attendees of the CLE enjoyed this presentation even though they did not watch the documentary, “Entertaining and well presented, ***Loved this even though I have never seen Tiger King.” If you are looking for a unique presentation that is engaging, informative and entertaining, I hope you will attend The Tiger King Trial, Murder for Hire CLE webinar.