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NJP Litigation Consultingformerly the National Jury Project

Every case outcome matters.

Several thousand cases, in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and Canada. From the highly publicized to the relatively unknown.

Why we do this work

We have worked from small-town courthouses to big-city ones, from jailhouse visiting rooms to lawyers’ offices with magnificent views. What we have learned is that every case outcome matters. Trials are where life, liberty and civil rights are protected, where wrongs are compensated, and where justice is sought.

Our job is not to summarize research. It is to solve the problems the research reveals. We ask tough questions to help lawyers understand their cases, and we break even the most complex story into elements and language jurors can understand and repeat.

The challenge is always the same: figure out how to get jurors to want what our clients want. Understanding what motivates jurors’ decisions is the key to persuasion, and improving our clients’ ability to persuade is the focus of everything we do.

How we work

From the jurors’ side.

We examine, take apart and rebuild each case to show you how the fact finders will see it, under tight deadlines and in high-stakes cases.

Experienced people do the work.

Everyone at NJP brings decades of experience. The person you talk with is the person who does the work.

Part of your team.

We work closely with trial counsel, whatever the budget or timeframe, from a few hours of consultation to a full research program.

Where we come from

NJP began in the early 1970s, when lawyers and social scientists working on the Attica and Wounded Knee trials asked how social science could inform jury selection. It grew out of a committee of the National Lawyers Guild, with early co-sponsorship from the National Conference of Black Lawyers, and pioneers such as the social scientist Jay Schulman. Offices opened across the country, including Berkeley in 1975, and the project operated as a collective. Its practice manual, Jurywork: Systematic Techniques, started as a pamphlet mailed from that Berkeley office. Today, as NJP Litigation Consulting, we still do the same work.

Standing in the field

  • American Society of Trial Consultants

    Members of the field’s professional association. NJP consultants have served on its board, and Susan Macpherson received its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.

  • Jurywork: Systematic Techniques

    The three-volume Thomson Reuters manual on jury selection and trial preparation, written by NJP and updated every year.

  • Amicus briefs

    Briefs to the United States Supreme Court and state appellate courts on voir dire, pretrial publicity and juror behavior.

    Read the Lacaze brief (PDF) →

  • Courts and lawmakers

    A model criminal juror questionnaire prepared for the Northern District of California, consulting to the California Commission on the Future of the Courts, and work on California’s voir dire statutes, CCP 222 and 222.5.

“We understand the human story inside of every case and we help you tell it.”

Lois Heaney, President

Let’s talk.

Start a conversation about your case, your venue and your trial date. No budget is too small to talk.

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