Luber: Hey everyone - Marc Luber here.
Are you interested in leveraging your law degree to work in the legal field without
actually having to practice law?
We’re looking at some creative and entrepreneurial ways to do that today on JD Careers Out There
– so stick around!
[theme song] Alright, as may already know, at JDCOT, we explore career paths you could
do with a law degree both in and out of law, and we do that to help you find a career that
fits you and help you succeed.
Today, we’re looking at the growing world of outsourced legal support services and we’re
exploring a niche known as litigation graphics and court room presentation.
Our guest is Morgan Smith, and he’s the President and Founder of Cogent Legal, which
is a San Francisco-based litigation graphics company.
Morgan’s got over 17 years of litigation experience in class actions and personal injury,
and he left his law firm partnership in 2011 to form Cogent Legal.
And this is pretty cool - the Recorder’s annual poll of law firms and legal services
named Cogent the Best Courtroom Presentation Provider in Northern California for 2013.
Good stuff!
Let’s meet Morgan.
Morgan, welcome to the show.
Morgan: Thank you very much for having me here today.
Luber: Thank you for being here.
I’m really appreciating that.
Morgan, I’m going to ask you to tell us all about different roles in the outsourced
litigation support services world, but first give us your elevator pitch on what you do
as a litigation graphics specialist.
Morgan: Sure.
I’d be happy to talk about that.
The way I describe it is in today’s world, the jury really understands things in a visual
manner.
It’s very important to be able to get visuals in front of them.
Attorneys are really not set up often to be able to make these kind of visuals themselves.
So, where we fill a role is…
I’m an attorney.
I’ve been an attorney for many years.
When I was practicing, I liked to make my own graphics.
I was very involved in that process and figuring out ways to visualize a case and make it so
that a jury can understand it.
So now on an outsourced way of doing it, I am hired by other attorneys.
All my clients are attorneys, and I do all of the visuals that go into a courtroom or
a mediation.
It can be animations, it can be diagrams, charts, time lines, interactive things, it
can be PowerPoints, or almost endless possibilities of different ways that you can do visuals
in a court in order to explain complex concepts in ways that a jury can understand it better
than if you’re just talking about it.
So, that is my current business and I’ve been doing it about three years.
Luber: That’s great.
It’s exciting.
It’s interesting because when we watch trials on television, we see those graphics, we don’t
ever really stop to think, “Oh, someone had to make those!”
It’s kind of, as a viewer, as someone who’s not a litigator and not in the courtroom,
you kind of take it for granted.
So I’m interested to hear more.
Now, for years you were a successful litigator.
So what led to you leaving law, choosing to become an entrepreneur and starting this specific
path?
Morgan: Well, it wasn’t, by any means, an easy choice.
In some ways, it was the hardest choice I ever had to make because, as you say, which
is true, I had a very successful practice with a number of partners that were great
attorneys and are still great attorneys and doing well, but I really came to make a decision
that I did not want to spend the rest of my life litigating cases.
Once I made that decision, then it goes to the next question, which is, “Okay, if I’m
not being a litigator, what am I going to do with my life, and what am I going to do
with work in a fulfilling way?”
And I had to think really hard about what that next step was going to be.
But it really started with a decision that litigating was not something that I wanted
to do the rest of my life.
I did it for 17 years and I decided that was really about enough.
Luber: What makes this new path in litigation graphics rewarding for you?
Morgan: Well, one of the things that I enjoy the most, and it is when I’m meeting with
attorneys and really talking to them in a creative way about how they can think about
presenting their case - often in ways that they’ve never thought of.
And it is just so rewarding to be able to help people and feel that I’m getting them
to try new things.
Some of them, they’ll end up liking; others, they may not like - but then they really realize
how to negotiate that path to making their trials and mediations much more visual.
Luber: I love it.
So let’s dig in a little bit deeper.
I want to learn more about this.
Alright, good stuff!
If you’re watching on YouTube, please give us the thumbs up if this was helpful.
And if you’re podcasting or watching, please visit us at JDCOT.com.
You’ll hear lots more there from Morgan on what it’s really like to work in these
legal support services fields and how you can break in, how you can translate your skills
to break in and then succeed.
If you’re already at the site, make sure you join our membership.
That way you get access to the full version of this interview and lots more helpful video
content and all of our transcripts.
Thanks again for watching everybody.
I’m Marc Luber and I’ll see you soon.
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