This past week my partners and another friend have been preparing for wrongful death trials. I was asked to contribute some thoughts. Since I’ve collected a few ideas I thought I would share them even though they are not in any particular organized sequence. Some years back I copied an article entitled “A Portrait of a Mother” and what follows are some excerpts from that article. I regret that I didn’t keep the source or the author or I would…
Over many years of my law practice one of the most valuable things I regularly used was focus studies for my cases. I made a study about conducting them, hired difference jury consultants, with often differing ways of conducting them, and generally spent time learning all I could about the correct way to conduct them for the most valid results. I also learned how too often “vanity” studies were done by lawyers who thought they knew how to run them and ended up with “false…
Those of you who read this blog know my appreciation of the website The Jury Expert. http://www.thejuryexpert.com/ Mykol Hamilton and Kate Zephyrhawke published an article at the website: “Revealing Juror Bias Without Biasing your Juror…” which is worth reading. Their research and that of others demonstrates that the form of the question lawyers ask jurors can, and often does, pressure people into underestimating their own bias. They point out that such questions can drive the juror bias mentally underground by exerting social desirability pressure…