Legal Marketing & PR

PowerPoint: The Good, The Bad and The Awful

By Tom Kane

Last fall I made a presentation on lawyer marketing at a plaintiff’s bar association conference. I worked very hard at minimizing the number of PowerPoint slides I used and the number of words on each slide, because I really do believe that less is more. I shouldn’t have bothered, since my audience was obviously use to slides ad nauseam which contained WHOLE sections of the Code of Federal Regulations. Hopefully, my presentation offered some relief at least.

Being a big fan of Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog, it was good to see his post “Power Point Tips and Resources.”

I particularly liked the link to the YouTube video by comedian Don McMillan on “Life After Death by PowerPoint” which brought back memories of last fall, and really lightened up my day. It runs just under four minutes, and definitely worth viewing. It’s a hoot – and educational at the same time.

Jim’s post contains links to some of the gurus when it comes to PowerPoint presentations. Check them out the next time you are putting a presentation together.

• Dave Swanner’s free CD ROM of 100 PowerPoint Presentations for Plaintiff Attorneys;
• Meryl’s Notes Blog's “70+ PowerPoint and Presentation Resources and Great Examples;”
• Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen blog and specifically this post; and
• Cliff Atkinson’s books Beyond Bullet Points books and Beyond Bullets blog (which is transitioning to a subscription based blog at BBP Online).

I’ll be checking out these tools for my next presentation. Thanks Jim, as always.

Full post as published by Legal Marketing Blog on February 26, 2008 (boomark / email).