EXPERTISE
TSI Founder & Principal Trial Consultant, Karyn J. Taylor...
comes to the field of litigation after a long and distinguished career in broadcast journalism. She is a former producer for CBS News' 60 Minutes, ABC News' Closeup and 20/20, PBS' Frontline, and more, and is now a Trial Consultant and master storyteller with decades of experience crafting true stories for television, film, print, and court.
A magna cum laude graduate of Wellesley College, Karyn has won more than fifteen journalism and filmmaking awards and has been nominated for two EMMY's, a Writers' Guild Award, the Humanitas Prize (for writing), and the Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Award for Outstanding Journalism. In 1987, Stanford University awarded Karyn a prestigious John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists, making her the only television news producer selected from a field of over 80 highly qualified print and broadcast journalists who applied for fellowships that year.
At the news networks, Karyn wrote documentaries and magazine segments, but at Stanford, she put her story-telling skills to a whole new test. Inspired by the true life story of one of her fellow "Knight Fellows" (who, while still a toddler, had gotten lost behind enemy lines at the start of WWII), Karyn turned his tale into a screenplay and in 1994, saw her script become a Finalist (i.e., top 10 out of 6,073 entries) in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' Don & Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. For a budding screenwriter, that was like being nominated for an "Oscar," and Karyn was thrilled. (That's Karyn on Oscar's right.) Hollywood now beckoned, but Karyn's career was about to take a very different, and entirely unexpected, turn.
Karyn was back in New York covering a complex class action product liability lawsuit for "60 Minutes" when the Trial Team she was interviewing confessed their need for someone with her audio-visual storytelling skills to create "demonstratives" for court. Karyn had never heard of demonstratives (or of Trial Consulting, for that matter), and she certainly had no idea that her network television skills might be put to such use. But the trial attorneys were so determined to recruit Karyn to their "cause" that they told her exactly which trial consulting firm to approach!
Karyn was intrigued, but like any good journalist, she did a bit of sleuthing first and discovered that the field of Trial Consulting was still in its infancy. There was a need for people with skills like hers, though, and that got her thinking: She'd already spent a decade producing network news and had become restless since her year at Stanford. Craving a new challenge, she decided to take the "road less traveled," and that one headed straight to court.
Karyn joined top trial consulting firms Litigation Sciences, Inc. in 1992 and DecisionQuest in 1997, then recruited her own team of experienced visual storytellers, trial consultants, and strategic communicators to launch The Strategic Image (TSI) in Los Angeles in 2003. TSI is now based in the Chicago area (Karyn's home turf), but she and her colleagues happily work with clients across the country.
As a Trial Consultant, Karyn hit the ground running -- quickly becoming known for her unparalleled ability to make the complex simple -- and she's used that skill to help clients win record-setting verdicts time and time again. For example, asked to help explain advanced avionics to a lay jury on her very first case, she designed a computer-animated tutorial on the ring laser gyroscope that persuaded jurors to award Litton Industries a (then) record-setting billion-dollar patent infringement verdict against defense industry rival, Honeywell (Litton v. Honeywell).
And asked to help explain why a brand new hotel collapsed during an earthquake on the island of Guam, Karyn designed grammar school-level graphics to explain PhD-level structural engineering and earthquake code to a jury of local islanders, convincing them to award her client a record-setting $174 million in compensatory and punitive damages in the two-year-long construction defect case, Kawasho v. Mitsui.
Word of that win spread, and Karyn was soon asked to help explain the cause of work stoppages and cost overruns on an industrial construction site. By designing what she called "Conceptual Graphics," Karyn helped a small pipefitter win a record-setting $40 million-dollar construction claims verdict against oil industry behemoth, Exxon (Enserch v. Exxon).
High profile cases like those garnered headlines, but Karyn brings that same level of skill and dedication to every case she takes, and she's now worked on cases in virtually every area of the law: medical malpractice, professional malpractice, toxic tort, employment, insurance, patent infringement, entertainment, product liability, intellectual property, tribal, sexual harassment, contract, financial, personal injury, criminal, and more.
As a result, Karyn has been a featured speaker at multiple events sponsored by both the American Bar Association (ABA) and the Chicago Bar Association (CBA) and has presented before the Illinois Institute of Continuing Legal Education (IICLE), the Securities Experts' Roundtable, the American Society of Trial Consultants (ASTC), the State Bar of California's Intellectual Property Institute, the Continuing Education of the Bar (CEB), the Women Lawyers of Los Angeles (WLALA), the San Diego Inn of Court, and numerous law firms and regional bar associations.
Karyn's skill at simplifying complex technical subjects has clearly accrued to the benefit of her clients. But it's her ability to turn the hard, cold facts and evidence of any case into a concise, emotionally compelling story that has truly fueled her success.
Ready to take advantage of Karyn's award-winning story-telling skills to help craft your winning story for court?
Because running the race is really only fun when you win!
TESTIMONIAL
This remarkable woman was designed for her job. She has a unique bundle of abilities -- including an analytical and facile mind, imagination and creativity to spare, and a tireless devotion to the work -- and a dead-on background for her position. Each one of those was essential to her ability to undertake and excel in this large and difficult project....
Though the many difficult subjects and the long hours made aspects of this project wearisome, Karyn's personal charm, energy, and cooperativeness made our work a pleasure.
Robert L. Ivey, Esq.
Kawasho v. Mitsui