The Jury is Watching: Responsible AI Use for Visual Aids in Disputes
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October 07, 2025
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In high-pressure litigation, trial teams live under relentless deadlines to prepare presentations that often must be changed or discarded based on last-minute strategy changes or rulings. Importantly, litigation visual aid designers act as translators — quickly distilling technical, financial, or procedural complexity into persuasive visuals that help educate and persuade arbitrators, judges and juries.
Emerging AI tools are capable of producing graphics far quicker than human designers, with no need for breaks or sleep. It’s no wonder that attorneys might be tempted to use new AI tools to skip the design consultant and go straight from expert report to AI-powered presentation deck. In practice, however, just as careless use of AI has put attorneys in hot water with their court papers, using AI as a shortcut with visual aids rarely works.1 AI alone cannot decide what to show, how to sequence it, or why a juror should care. That judgment comes from experience — and from understanding trial strategy and human emotion and cognition.
What AI Can Do, and What Can Go Wrong
AI has raised the level of expectations inside both law firms and courtrooms. Attorneys expect more concepts, faster iteration and lower cost — while jurors are accustomed to the visual fluency of social media and streaming content. At the same time, firms are grappling with AI’s risks, from confidentiality breaches to questions of admissibility.
Used properly as a supporting tool, AI can accelerate almost every phase of visual development. The key is knowing where it adds value without compromising confidentiality or accuracy.
Safe and Impactful Use Cases May Include:
- Visual Metaphor Brainstorming: Asking AI to propose layperson analogies for complex topics.
- Prototype Slide Layouts: Using AI-powered design tools to generate multiple starting points for attorney review.
- Non-Case-Specific Illustration: Creating background art, stylized diagrams, or jury-friendly charts using generic or anonymized data.
But There Are Caveats:
- AI can hallucinate facts, introduce bias, or produce visual inconsistencies.
- Public AI tools may store or train on user input, raising confidentiality concerns.
- AI-generated content must still be reviewed for compliance with evidentiary rules and local court practice.
Confidentiality Risk, and How to Manage It
One of the fastest ways to derail a trial team’s confidence in AI is to accidentally disclose sensitive information to a public AI tool. Even if material isn’t strictly confidential under a protective order, it may still reveal strategic thinking or internal work product.
To reduce this risk, users should adopt a simple Traffic Light analogy for AI use in litigation visuals:
- Green (Safe in Public AI): Fully anonymized timelines, generic placeholder data, design-only prompts.
- Yellow (Secure AI Only): Real dates/events, draft demonstratives, actual case data — but only in enterprise-secure or on-premises AI with no data retention.
- Red (No AI, at least not without rigorous protocols): Party names, case numbers, witness or expert details, proprietary technical data, protected work product, trial strategy notes.
This framework has two benefits: it helps to protect the case, and it lets attorneys see that AI can be used responsibly, without crossing ethical or procedural lines.
How Good Is Too Good?
Beyond confidentiality, AI-generated visuals raise another important question for trial practice, that of Juror Perception. Some people have a general perception that overly polished visuals are less authentic. If AI is used to create overly realistic or photographic looking imagery, a jury might view them as attempts at “deep fakes,” or opposing counsel might try to paint the visual in that light, potentially compromising the attorney’s credibility beyond the visual aid itself.
The bottom line: AI is not a free pass to create “perfect” graphics. It’s a tool to speed iteration, expand creative options and free human designers to focus on judgment calls that win cases.
What Attorneys Should Demand from AI-Literate Designers
As AI becomes embedded in litigation visuals, the role of the designer in high-stakes litigation will shift from maker to strategist. Attorneys should look for designers who can:
- Integrate AI into Workflow: Knowing when and how to use AI to accelerate production without introducing errors or policy breaches.
- Maintain Narrative Coherence: Ensuring that every visual aligns with the attorney’s theory of the case and trial sequence.
- Safeguard Confidentiality: Applying structured frameworks like the Traffic Light system to vet all AI inputs and outputs.
- Bridge the Attorney-AI Gap: Translating legal strategy into AI-friendly prompts and AI-generated drafts into attorney-friendly options.
What Separates the Winners from the Losers
In the very near future, the question won’t be whether AI is used in litigation visuals – it will be how well it’s used. Just as e-discovery transformed document review, AI will transform the creation of visual aids.
Firms that ignore it are likely to fall behind in speed, creativity and juror engagement. Those that embrace it recklessly will face security breaches, discovery disputes and credibility challenges.
The winners will be the designers (and the attorneys who work with them) who combine legal design expertise with AI fluency — not just knowing what tools exist, but mastering how to deploy them strategically, ethically and persuasively. Attorneys preparing for trial today should start building those AI-ready visual teams now. The jury, as they say, is already watching.
Footnotes
1: Merken, Sara, “AI 'hallucinations' in court papers spell trouble for lawyers,” Reuters, (Feb. 18, 2025)
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October 07, 2025
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