If you've made it this far, you've learned a lot about empirical legal research, from research design to data collection to data analysis. We'd venture to say that you now know more about how to evaluate and conduct empirical studies than the vast majority of your colleagues, whether in law schools, law firms, legislative offices, or courthouses. And therein lies the problem. Empirical legal researchers can do everything right and yet still may be unable to communicate with their audience because their audience can't even begin to decipher, much less evaluate, the results of their studies. Having read the previous nine chapters, you know what a p-value is, you understand the meaning of the term "statistically significant," and you can interpret a regression coefficient. But many consumers of empirical legal research can't.

This is the chief reason we decided to write the next two chapters, both of which cover the communication of empirical research. They reflect our belief that executing a great study is terrific—unless of course no one reads it because they can't understand it. No analyst wants to be ignored, and this goes doubly so, we think, for empirical legal researchers. Perhaps more than most, they have a strong interest in conveying their results to the statistically informed and uninformed. And so moving away from statements that are meaningless to most legal scholars, lawyers, policy makers, and judges—about "p-values," "statistical significance," and "regression coefficients"—and toward forms of communication that "require little specialized knowledge to understand" is particularly apt for you, our readers.

The material in this chapter adapts the growing literature in the social and statistical sciences on presenting data to the unique needs of empirical legal researchers by delineating some general principles for (1) communicating the products of empirical legal research and (2) visualizing information. The next chapter offers more specific strategies. This is fun stuff. You'll see.

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