Litigation Support

Medical Illustration & Animation

By Blake Boyd

Listening to a doctor explain a procedure is one of the most difficult topics for a jury to visualize. Any case that involves injuries, whether it be a medical malpractice suit or a car wreck benefits from a quality medical illustration or animation.

Litigation Dynamics does not create our own medical illustrations for use in our presentations. This is a very specialized field that takes a graphic designer with an extensive medical background. Over the years I’ve seen some pretty impressive medical demonstratives, and the majority of the time they come from The Doe Report (which also runs Medical Legal Art).

From The Doe Report:

The Doe Report is the world’s most popular web site for medical demonstrative evidence with over 14,000 medical illustrations, medical animations and anatomical models. Attorneys rate our cost-effective medical images “highly effective” communication tools for trial exhibits, demand letters, depositions, arbitrations, mediations, settlement conferences, mock jury trials, and marketing.







While I can’t attest to how many illustrations they have, I do know that I’ve never had a client make a request they couldn’t produce.

The downfall of using a company such as The Doe Report is the cost. While each illustration differs in price, they are normally very cost prohibitive for smaller cases. But as you can imagine, we get asked to provide illustrations on a regular basis. So what’s our trick?

Your local library. Seriously. If you spend the time and go to the library you can find book after book with medical illustrations, all for free. And after you fill out your library card registration (come on, I’ll bet you don’t have one!), it actually doesn’t take long to find a couple good books with the illustration you need.

The next time you have a case involving an injury or botched medical procedure, put yourself in a jurors shoes… Would you be able to visualize what your expert is discussing? If not, I highly recommend using medical illustrations or animations.

Full post as published by The Trial Technologist's View on October 24, 2008 (boomark / email).