Presentation of findings and legal analysis. Reports will differ in terms of the issues monitored, standards applied, and findings. The following are general considerations regarding structure and content that are useful for all reports: • Introduce issues: Clearly define and delineate the scope of the topics and issues presented to illustrate the significance of each area that will be addressed; • Present the findings within the applicable legal framework: Prior to presenting the findings of monitoring, clearly set forth the applicable legal framework for analysis, including the domestic law and international fair-trial standards. Using monitoring data and case information. Trial-monitoring reports derive their strength from monitoring actual cases as they proceed in the system. Monitoring reports are not legal reviews of the legislative framework or treatments of other aspects of a legal system. Therefore, monitoring data and case information must always provide the central support for findings. Monitoring data and case information may be presented in a number of ways: • Illustrations of particular practices or problems: Using a detailed example from an individual case is an excellent technique for illustrating a particular problem. In providing examples, it should be representative. Errors or unjust results occur in individual cases in every system of justice and focusing on such singular cases does not serve a clear purpose and may be misleading. As a result, case examples should be presented only after first establishing and demonstrating that they are representative of a trend or part of systemic problem. In other words, examples should be illustrative of a larger general problem observed, not presented only to show that a problem occurred in a specific case; • Use of case names: The decision to provide case names ultimately relates to the purpose of reporting. Citing an exemplar case by name is not always necessary when using a case to illustrate a particular issue in a thematic or systemic report seeking to identify general practices and trends. For such a report, reference to the particulars of the case and court may be sufficient to illustrate the problem without providing the name of the defendant or case. On the other hand, when monitoring focuses on specific cases, crimes, or events, it may serve the purpose of monitoring to provide the case name for political or other documentation purposes; • Statistics: Statistics can have a powerful impact in illustrating the scope or severity of a problem for programmes using quantitative analysis. Official statistics may also help supplement qualitative monitoring or reporting of specific types of crimes, helping to illustrate imbalances in the numbers of arrests, prosecutions, dismissals, or verdicts. However, not all statistics are valuable statistics, and they must be used carefully. For instance, the percentage of defendants represented by counsel in all cases monitored may not be significant when many cases were minor offences. On the other hand, statistics regarding the number of defendants informed of their right to a defence counsel in these same cases would much better illustrate an issue relevant to fair-trial standards; 110 Trial-Monitoring: A Reference Manual for Practitioners