Lois Heaney has been a trial consultant with NJP since 1979 and is the firm’s president. Using the tools of social science, she has consulted with lawyers on more than 1,000 civil and criminal cases in state and federal courts across the country, with deep experience in personal injury, asbestos, insurance coverage, product liability, toxic torts, libel and criminal defense.
She has assisted in jury selection in hundreds of trials and has run hundreds of focus groups, mock trials and post-trial juror interviews. Her survey research covers venue, jury composition, severance and the impact of death qualification in capital cases, and she has qualified as an expert witness on juror bias, change of venue, voir dire procedures, death qualification and jury composition.
At the request of Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California, she chaired the committee of prosecutors, federal defenders and private defense counsel that prepared a model juror questionnaire for criminal cases. She served as a consultant to the California Commission on the Future of the Courts, and she coordinates NJP’s amicus briefs to the United States Supreme Court and state supreme courts on juror bias and voir dire.
Her criminal work includes some of the most closely followed trials in the country, among them the cases of Erik and Lyle Menendez, Robert Blake and Stephen Bingham. She has written widely on voir dire and jury composition, including “The Case for Meaningful Voir Dire on Race and Sexual Orientation Bias” and “Jury Pool Composition Issues: Who Is Missing and Why?”
Lois has spoken at the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, the Northern District of California Judicial Conference, New York State Unified Court System judicial seminars and the National Association of Women Judges, and has taught for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy and the Practicing Law Institute. She is a co-author of Jurywork: Systematic Techniques (Thomson Reuters).
Her comments on juries have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, and she has been a guest on Larry King Live, CBS Evening News, ABC’s Prime Time and NPR. She studied at Hampshire College and San Francisco State University.