Interactive case stories for trial lawyers
Scrollbrief builds interactive demand packages, mediation presentations, trial graphics and sentencing mitigation pieces. Each one is a private scrolling page where the picture moves with the argument and every factual line opens the record behind it.
Station Scrollbrief Character Fl (7) W Range adjuster to jury Keeper the attorney on the matter
Scroll. This page is the pitch and the proof.
I · The lamp
The problem
A serious case arrives as charts, ledgers, a police report, depositions, photographs and a policy. Each document is a ray. A reader a mile off sees a glow and no shape.
Customers of one case-management platform draft more than 100,000 demand letters a month with its AI tools. Sacra on Filevine A letter that looks like every other letter is read like every other letter.
On the carrier side, a review tool condenses a demand package in minutes. Verisk The adjuster can meet your client as a summary of a summary.
A settlement documentary or day-in-the-life video makes the harm felt, and one runs $5,000 to $15,000. The Indiana Lawyer The viewer still cannot skim it, search it or check one claim against the record. The record needs a lens.
II · The lens
What a scrollbrief is
A lighthouse lens keeps the slope of the glass and drops the bulk. A scrollbrief does the same to a case file: it keeps the facts that turn a reader toward the answer and sets the rest one tap behind them.
The person. What happened. Why it happened. What they knew. The harm. The numbers. The ask. Take the slider and cut the lens yourself.
Each factual sentence carries a chip that opens the page of the record it rests on: the chart, the transcript line, the bill. The other side’s best facts are on the page too, so nothing waits to be found.
It arrives as a private link that works on a phone, with a PDF twin for the claim file, the mediator or the court. Next: a working excerpt, built from a public case.
III · The beam · a working excerpt
Holding temperature, degrees Fahrenheit
Time to a third-degree burn
One dot per reported burn
From verdict to settlement
Step 01 · Liebeck v. McDonald’s, 1994
Read it the way an adjuster would: skim, stop where you doubt, open the source. Start with the heat. McDonald’s required its coffee held at 180 to 190 degrees. Other restaurants served near 160, and home brewers run 135 to 150. American Museum of Tort Law
Step 02
At 160 degrees a third-degree burn takes about 20 seconds. At McDonald’s holding temperature it takes about three. Run both clocks and wait them out. American Museum of Tort Law
Step 03
More than 700 people reported burns between 1982 and 1992. Carlson Law Firm McDonald’s answered that this came to one complaint per 24 million cups. Mental Floss The page shows both and lets the reader weigh them.
Step 04
The jury’s award came to $2.86 million: $160,000 in compensatory damages after a 20 percent fault reduction, plus $2.7 million in punitive damages. The judge cut the punitive award to $480,000, and the parties settled for a confidential amount. American Museum of Tort Law
IV · One fact, four ways
1 of 4 · Demand letterillustration
Re: Claim of S. LiebeckPage 14 of 62
…liability is further established by the temperature at which the product was held and served. Defendant required that its coffee be held at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit, at which temperature a third-degree burn occurs in approximately three seconds, whereas at 160 degrees the same injury requires approximately twenty.31 Other establishments in the area served coffee at substantially lower temperatures…
31 See Exhibit 22.
2 of 4 · Settlement videoillustration
“…coffee that hot burns through skin in about three seconds.”
3 of 4 · Slide deckillustration
4 of 4 · Scrollbrief
What each form lets the reader do
| The reader can | Letter | Video | Slides | Scroll |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Set their own pace | yes | no | partly | yes |
| Skim to the number | partly | no | yes | yes |
| Check the source in one tap | partly | no | no | yes |
| See it move | no | yes | partly | yes |
| Work it by hand | no | no | no | yes |
| Read it without a presenter | yes | yes | no | yes |
| File it as paper | yes | no | yes | yes |
| Hear a voice, see a face | no | yes | no | partly |
| Have it drafted in an afternoon | yes | no | yes | no |
The comparison
You just read the clock step. Here is that same fact in the three forms a firm usually sends, then in the form you just used. First, the demand letter: complete, familiar, and the reader builds the picture alone.
Film makes harm felt, and a face and a voice do work no page can. The viewer sits through the runtime to reach this one line, hears it once, and has no way to check it.
Clear when counsel presents it across the table. Read alone a week later by a claims supervisor, three bullets carry no proof.
The reader runs the clocks, waits out the twenty seconds and opens the source. Nobody told them the coffee was too hot. They timed it themselves.
A scrollbrief keeps the letter’s completeness, the film’s motion and the slide’s speed, and adds two things none of them have: the reader’s own hands and the source one tap away. It takes days where a letter takes an afternoon, and your letter still goes out with it.
V · Why it holds
A presentation works when the reader understands it, believes it and can repeat it to the person who signs the check. Learning research has measured what helps with the first of those.
Pace
A meta-analysis of segmenting studies found that people learn better from material presented in learner-paced segments than from one continuous run. Educational Psychology Review
A scrollbrief is segments the reader advances. A film is one continuous run.
Place
Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures sit near each other on the screen. Mayer, Multimedia Learning
Each step sits on the visual it describes. A letter sends the reader to Exhibit 22.
Pairing
People learn more deeply from words and graphics together than from words alone. Mayer, Research-Based Principles
A demand letter is words alone. A scrollbrief pairs every argument with its picture.
These findings come from learning research, most of it with students. Adjusters, mediators and judges have yet to be studied this way, so take the research as the reason for the design and judge the result on the excerpt above.
VI · Four lights
Firms search for this work under a dozen names. These are the four things Scrollbrief builds.
Injury and wrongful death
Liability, medical chronology, damages and the ask on one page for the adjuster, before suit.
Also called a settlement demand package, a settlement brochure, or the exhibits to a policy-limits demand.
$7,500 to $15,000, about 10 business days.
Cases in suit
The brief the mediator reads before the session, plus visuals for opening and closing.
Also called a mediation brief, litigation graphics, demonstrative exhibits, or illustrative aids.
From $20,000, three to four weeks.
Section 1983 and public interest
What officials did, what the rules allowed, and how others in the same position were treated.
Used for police misconduct claims, retaliation cases and public-interest campaigns.
Priced as a demand piece or by scope.
Criminal defense
For one reader, the judge: who the defendant is, what changed, and the plan.
An alternative or companion to a sentencing mitigation video, made to travel with the sentencing memorandum.
$5,000 to $15,000, two to three weeks.
VII · By case type
Pick a case type to see what the page carries. These describe the form and the records each kind of case usually has.
VIII · The keeper’s rules
Scrollbrief is the firm’s vendor. Counsel sets the theme and the ask, approves the outline, and signs off on a cite table listing every claim against its source before anything is sent.
IX · Fees and time
| Piece | Flat fee | From file to link |
|---|---|---|
| Interactive demand package | $7,500 to $15,000 | about 10 business days |
| Mediation presentation and trial graphics | from $20,000 | three to four weeks |
| Sentencing mitigation piece | $5,000 to $15,000 | two to three weeks |
For scale, published figures put a settlement video at $5,000 to $15,000. The Indiana Lawyer A settlement documentary runs $20,000 and up. Plaintiff Magazine A sentencing mitigation video runs $5,000 to $25,000. Criminal Legal News Scrollbrief fees are billed to the firm, half up front.
Because the reader can pace it, check it and work it by hand. A video has a fixed runtime and no footnotes. A slide deck needs its presenter. A scrollbrief lets an adjuster, mediator or judge skim to the number, open the record behind any line, and run a timeline or a clock themselves. Learning research finds people learn better from learner-paced segments, and from words set beside their pictures.
The attorney does. Scrollbrief works as the firm’s vendor. The attorney sets the theme and the ask, approves the outline, reviews a cite table listing every claim and its source, and signs off before anything is sent.
Scrollbrief signs confidentiality terms with each firm and follows any protective order in the case. Pieces are hosted on a private link that search engines cannot index, with no third-party scripts. On the agreed takedown date the link closes and working files are deleted.
X · The maker
Scrollbrief comes out of Michael Wilhelm’s scrollies: 20 published interactive essays, each readable without scripts, each with a plain-text twin, each with its sources listed. The mark on this page is a lighthouse lens cut into seven rings with the formula from one of them.
thickness = profile(h) mod t rings = 7
A mechanism, explained
How a ringed lighthouse lens gathers lamp light into a beam a ship can see from twenty miles out, in five parts with sliders the reader works by hand.
Evidence, on the record
Five ways water, light and animal eyes change what seeing means, closing with a species list and an “On the record” section of sources.
Built for any reader
A touch-first symmetry toy: draw one line and mirrors turn it into a butterfly, a starfish or a snowflake.
The ask
Pick a matter with a strong record and a story that is hard to see in the stack. One call is enough to tell whether the form fits, and what the first screen would be.
The record, gathered into one beam.