Litigation Simulation Services
Trial & Jury Consulting
In the past, for our current clients, we have taken consulting cases on a contingent fee basis. In other words you only pay for costs, travel, accommodations, and jurors. There is no consulting fee unless you settle or prevail at trial.
LET US TAKE THE RISK WITH YOU.
As you know we are no longer doing personal group focus groups for the next month or two due to COVID-19 and the resulting social restrictions. Instead, we are utilizing two tried and true research methodologies. First, is a live virtual interactive focus group meeting. This group consists of anywhere between 6 and 12, or more, individuals during our live presentation and feedback sessions. The second research technique is a written fact pattern. In this technique, a fact pattern is presented to jurors for their feedback. Each element of the case is layered upon layer of facts for isolation of the significant issues that affect jurors’ decision making process. See below for examples.
Researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Michigan State University, and the University of Nevada-Reno have come up with a questionnaire called the JUST scale to measure citizen confidence in jury trials. Some of the questions in the scale may be of use to litigators during voir dire to determine levels of trust in the jury system they are asked to participate in. For court administrators, the legal news outlet Lexology posits, “As courts are unsteadily moving back to in-person jury trials, the many precautions that need to be layered over that system, and the reluctance of many to show up, … the JUST scale could be useful in gauging how citizens make it through the transition back to in-person trials.
Seth Cousins, a member of the jury that convicted Roger Stone of seven felonies, this week wrote a passionate op-ed in the Washington Post defending the jury and its foreperson against attacks made by Stone’s defense team and others. On the day Cousins’s piece was published, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson summoned the former jurors back to court for individual questioning by the trial lawyers with respect to defense allegations of misconduct. All of this was preceded by a defense motion seeking Judge Jackson’s recusal because she praised the jury as a whole during her sentencing allocution. Could these intricacies become a casebook lesson in jury trial management?
ABOTA members have long been promoters and defenders of trial by jury. In the face of recent social media attacks on trial judges, ABOTA’s national president, Luther J. Battiste III, published a statement that includes this exhortation, “The rule of law, the role of the jury, and the independence of the judiciary are fundamental, guiding principles of our historic, constitutional system of the separation of powers so admired throughout the world. All play a vital role and must remain independent of political or personal influence. The judicial branch was intentionally created to be apolitical. Judges are governed by the rule of law—not partisanship or shifting political winds. Judges are precluded from defending themselves by speaking in public on matters in which they sit as judge. We, the American Board of Trial Advocates, can and do speak on their behalf when unfair criticism is leveled against them or pressure is applied in an attempt to affect their impartiality. We do so now.”
The Hartford Courant last week published an op-ed piece in which appellate judge (and former trial judge) Douglas S. Lavine argues that peremptory strikes are widely misused to keep minorities off of juries.