Last week I wrote about a master storyteller at Boeing who taught me a lesson about juror attention. But there was something else on that tour that stuck with me—a single image tucked into a hallway near the visitor center.

It was a chart comparing the size of Boeing’s Everett Factory to some of the world’s most iconic landmarks. Versailles. The Pentagon. The Taj Mahal. Places that live large in the public imagination.

And there it was—this red outline showing the Everett plant, dwarfing them all.

It reminded me of something trial presentation companies like ours face all the time: how do you convey scale to an audience with no frame of reference?

When a case is massive, or sprawling, or financially complex, how do you make that feel real?

That’s what this article is about.

Jurors Don’t Think in Gigabytes or Square Feet

In trial, we often deal with scale: the size of a company, the number of emails produced, the decades of history behind a patent, or the hundreds of transactions in a financial dispute. But jurors don’t think in terabytes. Or linear feet of files. Or server loads. And they certainly don’t think in spreadsheets.

They think in pictures. Comparisons. Landmarks. Experiences.

The Boeing chart works because it doesn’t just say the Everett Factory is big. It shows you it’s bigger than Versailles, bigger than Vatican City, even bigger than the Pentagon. It uses what’s already in your brain to make a new fact easier to grasp.

That’s what a good trial presentation company does too.

Scale Is Not Just Size—It’s Emotional Weight

We once had a case involving a warehouse fire. The damages were enormous, but the client’s biggest challenge was explaining how big the warehouse was. They had photos. They had blueprints. But none of it landed.

So we created a graphic comparing the warehouse footprint to a football field. Actually, four of them. That’s when it clicked.

Another time, we helped a team explain the volume of documents produced in a healthcare fraud case. Instead of listing numbers, we showed how many floor-to-ceiling boxes it would take to hold the materials. It would have filled an entire courtroom.

Jurors didn’t just understand the scale—they felt the burden.

This aligns with what we outlined in our classic piece, 6 Ways to Convey Size and Scale to a Jury, where we emphasized visual analogies, 3D animations, and real-world anchors as essential persuasion tools.

Build Context, Not Just Graphics

What the Boeing chart and our most effective demonstratives have in common is context. Without it, even the most well-designed graphic becomes abstract.

In 5 Ways to Make Time Comparisons Unforgettable at Trial, we explain how showing side-by-side timeframes or historical benchmarks helps jurors feel the duration of an event—not just understand it. Similarly, in Litigation Support: Making Sense of the Statistically Significant, we explore how data visualizations can be reframed to make abstract statistics graspable and human.

And in Using Scale Models as Demonstrative Evidence: A Winning Trial Tactic, we discuss how physical scale models—in the right hands—can be far more powerful than a slide deck.

The point? You must give jurors a reference point. That’s how you get them nodding along instead of mentally checking out.

Caution: Don’t Overdo It

We’ve also written about how not to use scale. 5 Demonstrative Evidence Tricks and Cheats to Watch Out For is a cautionary tale. Jurors—and judges—can spot exaggeration. When scale visuals become misleading or manipulative, they backfire.

It’s about precision, not spectacle.

A graphic that compares a 1-inch scratch to the Grand Canyon might be memorable—but it’ll also invite a cross-examination moment you’d rather avoid.

Why Trial Presentation Companies Must Master Scale

Any trial presentation company can make slides. But not every one can translate abstract size into jury intuition. That’s what wins credibility.

So next time you’re preparing a demonstrative for a complex timeline, a massive archive of data, or a national footprint of a company, ask yourself:

• What landmark would make this size make sense?

• What image would stick in a juror’s mind?

• What comparison would pass the hallway test at Boeing?

Because sometimes, the best way to show how big something is… is to show how much bigger it is than something already huge.

And if scale plays a role in product liability, don’t forget to review how we illustrated comparative defect scale in Product Liability Demonstratives: Defects and Failure to Warn. There, too, scale wasn’t just about size—it was about trust, clarity, and consequence.

If you’re preparing for a case with scale issues—whether spatial, temporal, or financial—we’d be glad to help. Schedule a quick call with me, and let’s talk through some ideas that go beyond just numbers.

Because showing scale isn’t about decoration. It’s about persuasion.