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Litigation Graphics

Client

DOAR · DRC, New York

Year

2024–26

Disciplines

Litigation Graphics / Information Design / Data Visualisation / Motion Design

Role

Graphics Associate, DOAR
Information Designer, DRC

Information design for high-stakes federal trials.

Overview

Two years designing the visual arguments that go in front of federal juries. Some of it is evidence made legible: documents, expert data, financial records. The rest is concepts too technical to show directly, which I build as visual analogies and animate in sequence so a jury can follow while the attorney talks. It has to be understood the first time, and it has to carry the argument rather than sit beside it.

How they are used

These are built in stages and advanced on a click, so the attorney decides when each piece lands and can stay on any of them for as long as the argument needs. That changes how you design them. Everything can sit on the board at once, because nothing is shown until it is being talked about. The structure gets worked out with the attorneys before anything is drawn, so the picture says the thing they need said and nothing wider.

We wanted a visual way to explain what a contract was for, simply and with something to look at. My idea was to draw it as an isometric document with the things being exchanged sitting on top, so you see the deal instead of reading clauses. Everything in the frame was built for this one, apart from the money.
A software system drawn as a restaurant: the counter the customer sees, the kitchen behind it, the suppliers feeding both. Isometric lets every stage sit in one picture, so the attorney can walk through it a piece at a time and nobody has to hold a diagram in their head.
Three parties in a produce chain and what each one gained. The part that does not survive a screenshot: every icon along the bottom animates on its own beat, as the argument reaches it. Built with a colleague.
Two years of releases on a single axis. Twenty labelled moments, revealed one at a time, so the density never arrives all at once.
A development process, stage by stage. The same move as the roadmap: everything already placed, nothing shown until it is being spoken about.
Direct evidence is seeing the man out in the rain. Circumstantial is seeing him come through a door with a wet umbrella and working out the rest. I drew both scenes, and the harder part was the tone: no cartooning, a narrow palette, figures kept straight, so it still reads as a courtroom.
Six exhibits. Hover any of them for what it was doing.

The work

At DRC and now at DOAR, the same discipline in both. This is federal litigation at the top end, where the parties are global technology companies, federal agencies and national retailers. That is where the standard comes from. There is no margin for error on an exhibit, because anything you put up can be challenged, and on a matter that size nobody wants to be the reason a room stops trusting the graphics. I also learned to work a war room: the week before trial, everyone in one place, graphics changing as the testimony does.

What the work is made of

Most of it is information design in the plain sense. Deciding what a picture has to prove, what goes where, what earns emphasis, and what gets cut so the rest can be read. Then illustration, mostly isometric, because a whole system fits into one frame that way without being flattened. And then the formats litigation runs on: infographics, timelines, process boards. I have built enough of those now to lay one out quickly and know what will hold at a distance.

What it did for me

Two things. My design standards went up permanently, because here a single overstated word can be challenged in front of a judge. And the thinking behind the design got sharper: hierarchy, what the eye reaches first, how a layout can carry an argument instead of just holding it. That second one is what I would keep if I had to choose. It applies to anything, and it is what I bring to work that has nothing to do with courtrooms.

On confidentiality

Every exhibit on this page had its parties, names and identifying figures removed before it was ever shown outside the case. Real client material is confidential and does not appear here in any form.