Jill Kustner

Trial Consulting Advisor Jill Kustner helps litigators from the nation’s leading law firms and Fortune 500 corporate legal departments simplify and clarify their case stories. She begins her process by reading through case documents, including key expert witness reports, to gain a deep understanding of a client’s legal matter and to uncover case elements that might be elucidated through visual depictions and principles of information organization. She specializes in making experts’ complex concepts accessible by breaking complicated technical processes down into their constituent parts, reorganizing them so that each builds on the previous, and reassembling them into a coherent whole. When working with Jill, clients find that their strategies become more effective, their communication becomes more compelling, and their visual displays become more impactful.

A trial consultant for more than a decade, Jill has sharpened strategies for a variety of litigation matters, with a particular focus on complex commercial, intellectual property, and construction cases. She led case teams whose efforts resulted in favorable verdicts or settlements for clients such as Align Technologies, Netflix, Nintendo, LeapFrog, and Cricket Communications. She was also the company’s lead trial consultant for the In re Deepwater Horizon oil spill case. While managing that case, she and her team developed a vast array of graphics, animations, and three-dimensional models, as well as a hierarchical, scalable “portal” in which to organize these various visual materials.

As a complement to her role as a trial consulting advisor, Jill leads the quality control team for the IMS Legal Strategies group. She and the team set high standards for production quality and help institute those standards company-wide. She leads “QC Corner” sessions, in which she shares information about specific grammatical topics and then provides practice opportunities to help team members solidify their skills. Jill is passionate about producing high-quality work, and her colleagues view her as an ally who is always ready to provide them with friendly assistance and insights.

Prior to joining IMS, Jill spent many years working in the field of structural engineering (with a brief detour into the world of television cooking shows). She designed structures for a variety of residential and commercial buildings, including a remodel of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Circle Gallery. She also served as an expert witness in numerous construction litigation cases and taught structural engineering to architects. Jill earned a BS degree in architectural engineering from California Polytechnic State University. When she can be pried away from her graph paper, Jill spends her weekends taking road trips and proudly uncovering typos in major publications.