Tierney E. Vial

Tierney Vial is an attorney in the Litigation & Trial Group. Her practice focuses on complex commercial litigation and employment disputes in both state and federal court.

Before joining McNaul, Tierney clerked for the Honorable Benjamin H. Settle in the Western District of Washington. She assisted in jury and bench trials for both civil and criminal matters and gained valuable insight into best trial practices and judicial decision-making. Before clerking, she worked in the Appellate Practice group at Carney Badley Spellman where she assisted in a range of civil and criminal appeals. Tierney brings her knowledge of both appellate and trial level litigation to craft efficient solutions for her clients.

Tierney earned her J.D. from the University of Washington Law School in 2021. After her first year in law school, Tierney interned in the Violence Against Women Act Unit at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project where she assisted clients in both English and Spanish. In her second and third years she assisted in representing an elderly incarcerated client through the Washington Innocence Project in a case that established a new Washington standard for cruel punishment in conditions of confinement. She successfully argued in front of Division II that the cruel provision of the Washington Constitution offers more protection than its federal counterpart in the conditions of confinement context (In re Pers. Restraint of Williams, 15 Wn. App. 2d 647, 476 P.3d 1064 (2020)). The Washington Supreme Court granted discretionary review and held for the first time that conditions of confinement which create a substantial risk of serious harm are cruel punishment unless reasonably necessary to accomplish a legitimate penological goal (In re Pers. Restraint of Williams, No. 99344-1 (Wash. Oct. 7, 2021)). She remains committed to pro-bono work in her practice.

Tierney earned her B.A. from the University of Virginia where she graduated with distinction. Between university and law school, she taught high school English literature at Casablanca American School in Morocco and English as a second language at a primary school in Vigo, Spain.