C. Wade Bowden, Esq., Jones, Foster, Johnston & Stubbs, P.A.
Preparation and Performance
Listed as one of South Florida's top lawyers by the South Florida Legal Guide and Florida Trend magazine, C. Wade Bowden has been a commercial litigator with Jones, Foster, Johnston & Stubbs, P.A. in West Palm Beach for the past 12 years. Mr. Bowden is a board-certified business litigator who handles commercial torts (e.g., intentional interference with business relationships, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud), securities litigation, and construction and probate matters.
When Mr. Bowden needed to argue a 2004 motion in a complex business matter, he selected TrialGraphix to prepare an iBrief of the pleading. "The iBrief was effective because it guided the judge from spot to spot in the document," he says. "You don't want the judge fumbling through authority; you want him to be able to move rapidly and easily without presenting a big phone book full of stuff."
The success of the brief led to an extensive period of discovery and trial preparation during which TrialGraphix consultants provided wide-ranging support. From December 2006 through August 2007, Mr. Bowden was in daily contact with his team at TrialGraphix. Beginning in June 2007 and throughout the seven-week trial in Palm Beach County, his courtroom consultant was on-site in his office or in the courtroom.
The courtroom consultant digitized the entire set of exhibits, synchronized all the depositions and created a detailed map of the personalities in the litigation. "It was like having another person in the office, maybe better," Mr. Bowden recalls. "They are very impressive."
"You don’t want to distract a jury by needing to find documents, because they start paying attention to what you're doing as opposed to what is up on the screen . . . Them [TrialGraphix] iBrief was effective because it guided the judge from spot to spot in the document."
In addition to providing support with documents, TrialGraphix experts executed a mock trial to identify critical issues and pitfalls. "The challenge an attorney faces in any trial involving complex issues is making the case readily digestible by people who haven’t lived it for years," Mr. Bowden says.
The extensive preparation tremendously enhanced his performance in court. "You don’t want to distract a jury by needing to find documents, because they start paying attention to what you’re doing as opposed to what is up on the screen," he says.
To avoid that potential diversion, TrialGraphix assigned a bar code to each key document and numbered excerpts of the video testimony. Equipped with a scanner gun, similar to what is used in a grocery store, Mr. Bowden asked his adverse witnesses questions and then simply triggered the gun on a bar code in a specific document. The document immediately appeared on the screen to refute the witnesses' contentions. "The seamlessness of the presentation is almost as important as the presentation itself," Mr. Bowden says. "You are almost like a newscaster or a really good professor teaching the jury and cross-examining the witness at the same time."
After each tentative response, one witness developed a habit of fearfully peering out at Mr. Bowden's outline and nervously watching him reach for the trigger. She anxiously emphasized three times during her testimony that she was not lying. "It was obvious that she was, and that the trial was won on the first day," he says. "I don’t think that without the technology that TrialGraphix offered that would have been possible."
Ultimately, trial lawyers want the jury to like them, rather than be frustrated with them, Mr. Bowden says. “If there had been more fumbling or pausing, the attention would have been focused on what I was doing as opposed to what I said.”
Every detail impacts the outcome. "I think people make a lot of mistakes when they do things themselves," Mr. Bowden says. "TrialGraphix would save them from that."