In this roundtable discussion, four prominent experts explore the opportunities and challenges facing jury consultants today.
Trial Strategy
The old school of thought was the plaintiff should be in the courtroom to show jurors the lawsuit was important enough to the plaintiff to show up to court. A more recent trend is to keep the plaintiff out of the courtroom to focus jurors’ attention on the defendant’s wrongful conduct and to keep the spotlight off the plaintiff.
Research demonstrates that noncompliance with restrictions on Internet access is a potential problem across almost all age groups. To get “wired” jurors to cooperate, we need to look at not only how jury instructions are framed but also how other aspects of the trial process should be adjusted.
Tools that can help jurors start out and remain fully engaged in their task are sometimes called jury trial innovations.
How do you, as the attorney, persuade the jurors in such a way that they persuade each other to decide in your favor? Nearly 50 years ago, researchers at Yale identified the five steps in the persuasion process: attention, comprehension, acceptance, retention, and action. You must have the jurors’ attention, they must understand your message, they must accept or agree with it, remember it, and act on it in the desired fashion in deliberations. How do these factors play out on a practical level in preparing an opening?
Opening is not the case. Opening is just the bare bones story – the 101 level of the case.