By Bill Yingling Staff reporter
Between the diverse worlds of law and art, Kenneth
Lopez has found his niche. He graduated from Widener University School
of Law in 1995. But he’s not a lawyer. Although he creates visual
image, he says he’s not an artist. He considers himself a translator,
speaking the two languages of law and art. And, after graduating from
law school, Lopez saw it as a talent and an opportunity. “Knowing
both, I could bring the two worlds together that weren’t coming
together,” he said.
Lopez, a native of Alexandria, Va., who lived in
Greenville during his time at Widener, owns a rapidly growing company
in the Washington D.C. area, Animators at Law Inc. The firm makes computer-animation
videos for litigants to use as evidence in lawsuits. These are no primitive
two-dimensional cartoons. They are elaborate visuals, using the same
kind of technology employed in the movies “Jurassic Park”
and “Toy Story.” The smooth, occasionally life-like images
are intended to help lawyers and expert witnesses prove their points
to judges – and sometimes to adversaries. One of Lopez’s animations,
for example, played a pivotal role in a complex medical-malpractice
case in Delaware several years ago. During law school, Lopez was a clerk
for a Wilmington lawyer Bruce Hudson, who represented a local woman
who was sterilized by her doctor. After a woman delivered a son at Christiana
Hospital, the doctor said he needed to remove the patient’s uterus
and an ovary to save her life. The patient accused the doctor of negligence.
Before the case went to trial a second time, Lopez prepared an animation
illustrating Hudson’s case. Hudson said he showed it to the doctor’s
insurance company. He planned to use it as evidence. The case was scheduled
to go to court on Monday, Hudson said. But the parties reached a settlement
the Friday before. Powerful visual images helped bring about the agreement
and averted more courtroom argument, Hudson said. “ I think it
played a major part in that they knew that the jury would ultimately
see that,” he said. “ I felt it was very persuasive.”
Lopez said he wanted to be a lawyer from the time
he was in second grade. But he also was interested in technology. He
taught himself computer animation as a hobby during law school. After
graduation, Lopez saw that, by starting the animation business, he could
continue to pursue his hobby and make money working in the legal industry.
The business has immersed him in the kind of high-profile cases he believes
he would have taken 20 years to get involved in, had he stayed on a
traditional legal track. His company recently prepared a 10-minute video
for a case stemming from the 1996 ValuJet plane crash in the Florida
Everglades. It synchronizes cockpit audio with animated images of the
plane. “ It was a powerful, chilling and disturbing,” Lopez
said. Hudson said computer animations are sophisticated tools that help
lawyers communicate with juries. But he noted that, legally, they are
merely extensions of the artist renderings that lawyers used before
the digital age. Showing the images in court is governed by rules of
evidence. For example, Lopez said that, to qualify as a “ simulation”
under federal rules, a visual must make a prediction or calculations
based on the known facts – a strict standard. As a result, he said,
animations often are only scenes or images reflecting someone’s
opinion. A simulation tries to reach a conclusion on its own. Animation
does not. Nevertheless, animations can be expensive. Hudson said the
visual for the Delaware case, although only about three minutes long,
cost about $10,000. He expects that prices will drop with the cost of
computer software. Lopez said that today, many of his clients are big
corporations that can afford the kind of quality animations his firm
produces. “ That makes up for the bulk of our clientele,”
he said.
Copyright 1998, The News Journal Co.
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
Privacy
| Legal
©1995-2003 Animators at Law, Inc. All Rights Reserved
|
| |
|
Animators at Law
National Headquarters
814 King Street
Alexandria, Virginia 22314
800.337.7697
|
