What you show
is the story you tell

Visual trial strategy for the plaintiff’s bar

I am Amy Hall

From my offices in Napa Valley, I work with plaintiff firms across the country to develop visual strategy for litigation. For the past 17 years, I have provided assistance on over 400 cases, including some of history’s largest verdicts and settlements.

You must earn the jury’s trust.
Jurors are biased against plaintiff’s lawyers.
The only way for your message to land is for you to be accepted as a trusted source.

You must communicate your case in a way the jury will understand, learn, and remember.
Clarity is the plaintiff lawyer’s tool; confusion and doubt belong to the defense.

Your case presentation must engage juror emotions while being grounded in fact evidence.
Jurors need to care about your case and understand why it matters.

Once you earn the jurors’ trust,
you have their permission to teach
why your case matters.

Only then will jurors take action.

Preparation is everything

Half of the brain’s resources are devoted to processing visual information. Humans are visual, emotional storytellers. Yet many lawyers spend their entire time speaking, with few or no visuals.

Jurors are faced with an unrelenting barrage of intimidating, overwhelming data. When your presentation includes verbal and visual communication together, juror attention and retention are exponentially enhanced. Visual trial strategy is essential for jurors to understand, learn, remember, and care. Show, don’t tell.

Visual trial strategy means giving the jurors what they need, when they need it, to reach the conclusions you want.

Amy G Hall
Photo by Israel Valencia

My backgrounds in cognitive science, journalism, the gambling industry, advertising, and graphic design have given me a unique and highly relevant skill set for litigation strategy.

I combine exceptional design, editing, and writing with real-world insights on decision-making and emotion to distill your case themes into an effective visual strategy.

I’ll tell you the difficult truths about your case, and then I’ll help you resolve them, providing tangible, ready-to-use tools that address the toughest case issues.

Hundreds of cases later in nearly every state, history has demonstrated that my contributions produce results.

My work spec is one case per week, 20 hours live via Zoom (5 hours/day for 4 days) .

In a dynamic and fast-paced process, together we unpack and solve your case’s tough issues while I create interrelated and interdependent demonstrative exhibits in real time. At the conclusion of the work session, you’ll receive a suite of custom trial-ready exhibits that provide a comprehensive storytelling model for your case.

Visual strategy works for every kind of case. Please schedule early in the case development, not on the eve of trial; your visual strategy work session should be before the close of discovery.

If you are interested in working on a case together, please contact me.

I am also available to make presentations at select Continuing Legal Education events. Read on to learn more about my visual strategy CLE courses for trial lawyers.

  • Mass tort
  • Personal injury
  • Medical negligence
  • Trucking
  • Nursing home
  • Product defect
  • Intellectual property
  • …every kind of case

Amy Hall’s Trial Strategy Academy features self-study visual trial trategy Continuing Legal Education (CLE) courses exclusively for trial lawyers and their teams:

These content-rich courses teach visual trial strategy from the ground up and are designed to profoundly impact the results you’ll achieve for your clients. Learn more about visual trial strategy CLE courses and enroll today.

Amy Hall’s Trial Guides webinar on visual trial strategy is available. Get real-world tools you can put to use on cases right away in this 1-hour webinar.

 

Learn more about visual trial strategy from Amy in conversation with trial lawyer Michael Cowen on his award-winning Trial Lawyer Nation podcast. Also available on Spotify.

Learn about visual trial strategy for litigation live and in person. Amy is an invited presenter at these 2024 events:

  • Amy presented on visual trial strategy to Civil Assistant U.S. Attorneys with the U.S. Attorneys’ Office in Dallas on May 9

“Amy brings clarity, creativity, and hard work to trial prep. Every time I work with her, I walk out knowing my case better than I thought possible—and certainly much better than the defense. If you want to take your case to the next level, both in terms of strategy and graphics, Amy is the expert.”

Spencer Pahlke

Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger • California

“I am a huge fan of working with Amy because I really believe the exhibits she creates help me effectively communicate with the jury and win. Because she has so much experience with complex cases, she understands how to simplify things for the jury. She has a great understanding of how jurors learn and process the information we give them. I have a tendency to get too far ‘in the weeds,’ so I rely on Amy to help me tell an easy-to-understand story to the jury. Working with Amy has become a critical part of my trial preparation.”    

Tom Cartmell

Wagstaff & Cartmell • Missouri

“Amy gets strategy, communication, and persuasion, and the cognitive principles behind it all. The issue isn’t putting all the data on boards so that it fits; Amy truly understands what it means to focus only on the kill shots.  Amy is like a juror. If something doesn’t make sense to her, she’ll ask the question, which forces the lawyers to explain it better, to hone in better on why the jury should care. Working with Amy is not a luxury; it’s critical that she is part of the development of the case.”

Rodney Jew

Litigation Strategist • California

“Going to trial or mediation? Need outstanding visuals to tell your story? Amy Hall is the only person we work with at Stark & Stark. At the end of a four day session,  Amy will have produced over 50 demonstrative exhibits, from liability through damages. She is the best.”

Bruce Stern

Stark & Stark • New Jersey

“Amy’s skillful analysis of our cases always puts us a giant step ahead of the defense. Our work sessions and drill downs are always amazing and invaluable. Her production of trial graphics and wordsmithing helps us to make our complex cases simple, our facts laser focused, and our arguments crystal clear to a jury. Amy’s remarkable abilities have been indispensable to our firm.”

Jesse Reiter

ABC Law Centers (Reiter & Walsh) • Michigan

“Amy takes the time to learn what the case is about, what the theory is, and what the defenses are, and is able to almost magically translate that into something the jury can capture and hold on to. Working with Amy has changed the way I prepare for trial, and there is no doubt that our successes are a testament to her incredible talent.”

Alisa Marion

Beckman & Marion • Pennsylvania

“Amy has worked on many exhibits for me, and I can say that Amy truly gets it: how to explain concepts visually, how a board factors into an entire case, how to get along with lawyers and how we think. She asks questions that get to the heart of the issue and which help refine the message for jurors.”

Tom Jones

Davis, Bethune & Jones • Missouri

Super creative

Amy's legacy projects in advertising, marketing, game design, publication design, and fine art.