Big Data eDiscovery and the Emerging Importance of Infographics as Demonstrative Aides

Author: Eric Everson (LinkedIn)

Weve all heard the adage, A picture is worth a 1000 words. In an environment where data is being generated at an explosive rate (hence the emergence of Big Data), how does this adage stack up against 1000GB (Yes fellow Lexies, I know I could have just said 1TB, but it didnt fit the adage, so just go with it)? In what feels like a rising flood of data, can infographics help us sort through things and help us win trials? Ignoring that obvious Big Data fallacy (what we call Big Data today will not be big as we measure it by petaFLOPS even five years out), this soaring amount of data

has caused us to reconsider how we derive knowledge from data. This is where infographics step in, if youre not familiar with the term, chances are you are certainly familiar with the medium. Infographics is the artistic rendering of data visualization in other words its where digital graphics are used to demonstrate relationships in data. As I like to tell my students, infographics are like pie charts 2.0. As volumes of data grow, we increasingly use infographics to share knowledge from raw data. As seasoned infographics artist Dylan Lathrop acknowledges in his recent Harvard Business Review Blog Network post, Sometimes, good design even enables mental shortcuts. Glance at an infographic, and you can feel like you've processed massive amounts of information. As lawyers struggle to embrace Big Data in complex litigation, infograhics offer hope in helping the jurors understand difficult factual issues. In trials, the use of infographics in demonstrative aides can be utilized to assist the trier of fact in understanding the technical and complex issues that accompany volumes of data. Infographics in modern litigation remain subject to the same not only relevant, but reliable standard that was established in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Attorneys must keep in mind that courts also recognize how infographics can have dramatic effect and carry the inherent potential to mislead or confuse the jury. This is why demonstrative aides require prior proper disclosure and opportunity to object. As an archived ABA Newsletter properly contends, In addition to compliance with prior disclosures regarding its intended use, computer-generated evidence must also be authenticated under Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE) 901 and 902, and it is subject to general evidentiary standards of relevancy under FRE 401 and 402 and fairness under

FRE 403. Because each state has adopted its own evidence code, admissibility standards will differ among them. With more than 75 percent of midsize to large businesses implementing big datarelated solutions, infographics offer attorneys a way to effectively present information in complex matters.