If you have never experienced a World Cafe session it's great fun and very visual. It encourages participants to express their thoughts and ideas in pictures and diagrams all of which get pulled together in large drawing prepared by a professional artist which captures the themes in one coherent whole.
I was reminded of the benefit of using pictures for a proposal by a legal colleague this week. This was surprising in a way because images are counter cultural for lawyers. Our means of expression in drafting contracts and providing legal advice is words. Using language for clear articulation and precise meaning are the tools of our trade. We tend to frown on the use of pictures and diagrams, grudgingly accepting tables of figures in legal agreements.
And yet sometimes drawings can be a far more effective way of explaining a concept or a process whether legal or otherwise. You don't have to be an artist either to use a flip chart or whiteboard to set out some basic ideas. It is quite easy to draw simple diagrams and pictures without being Leonardo Da Vinci.
Apart from this being fairly obvious once you try, it seems that there is some scientific support for this approach as a large part of the human brain is used to process images, which it does very quickly and efficiently. Think about how fast we recognise the faces of friends and celebrities. I saw Rod Stewart in a restaurant this week and recognised him instantly even though I have never seen him in real life before.
So as lawyers in a making presentations and proposals and even in that holy of holies the legal contract maybe we should start making more use of images to help express concepts and communicate better.
I was reminded of the benefit of using pictures for a proposal by a legal colleague this week. This was surprising in a way because images are counter cultural for lawyers. Our means of expression in drafting contracts and providing legal advice is words. Using language for clear articulation and precise meaning are the tools of our trade. We tend to frown on the use of pictures and diagrams, grudgingly accepting tables of figures in legal agreements.
And yet sometimes drawings can be a far more effective way of explaining a concept or a process whether legal or otherwise. You don't have to be an artist either to use a flip chart or whiteboard to set out some basic ideas. It is quite easy to draw simple diagrams and pictures without being Leonardo Da Vinci.
Apart from this being fairly obvious once you try, it seems that there is some scientific support for this approach as a large part of the human brain is used to process images, which it does very quickly and efficiently. Think about how fast we recognise the faces of friends and celebrities. I saw Rod Stewart in a restaurant this week and recognised him instantly even though I have never seen him in real life before.
So as lawyers in a making presentations and proposals and even in that holy of holies the legal contract maybe we should start making more use of images to help express concepts and communicate better.
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