“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
Through a Glass Darkly
Imagine you are a detective assigned a complicated case. There are dozens of witnesses and potential suspects, complex facts, and mountains of evidence to sort through. Right before you start the investigation, you are told that you will not be allowed to physically see or touch any of the evidence nor talk to the witnesses or suspects in person. You will be limited to photos of evidence and video of witnesses—all in black and white. Nor will you be able to you use DNA evidence, fingerprints, or any database of suspects.
Does this sound absurd and unnecessarily limiting? It should—because it is.
Yet that’s exactly what many lawyers do when they limit themselves to most “state-of-the-art” tools and technology to analyze potential evidence.
Litigation is about storytelling. Whoever tells the more persuasive story wins. The story is built on evidence—facts that are gathered and analyzed and put together in the most convincing way possible.