Focus Groups for Trials
In today’s episode, we talk about focus groups to do for trial, whether that’s 30 days or 60 days before your trial date. You may also choose to do this earlier. But most of the time, there are pending motions that need to be rolled on, such as mediations that people need to get through to get to the point and for them to really speak their minds.
Listen in to know more about the different focus groups that are geared towards trial and what each focus group entails. The whole purpose of this focus group is because you’re going to trial. Therefore, you have to put in the commitment and the legwork needed for you to get the information you need.
In this episode, you will hear:
- What a mock trial looks like and its purpose
- A modified approach to a mock trial or an adversarial group
- Opening statements of the two parties and discussions based on them
- Examples of ways to prepare for trial
- The value of demonstrative evidence
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Supporting Resources:
If you have questions or a particularly challenging client preparation, email Elizabeth directly for assistance: elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com.
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I appreciate you joining me, and I hope that you’ve been enjoying our series of guests that we’ve had to talk about.
Getting ready for trial. If you haven’t tuned in, got a little catch up to do. We’ve had some awesome people come and talk to us about direct exam, [00:01:00] about preparing before and after witnesses, and also how to deal with this trial continuance fatigue, and a few things you can do to get around that. I want to take today’s episode and talk about focus groups to do for trial.
And We’re talking about the 30 days, the 60 days before your trial date. Now, you can do this earlier, but most of the time there are pending motions that need to be rolled on. There are mediations that people need to get through to be able to get to the point to really say in their minds, all right, this is going to trial.
We need now to move into the next steps. So that’s really what we’re talking about. That may happen earlier in your mind than 30 to 60 days. And of course there may be continuances that happen as well. But we’re really talking about specific kind of focus groups that people will do that I have done that really geared towards trial, not necessarily [00:02:00] a concept or a narrative, but really we’re down the road.
We know what the other side’s going to say. So we’re really talking about focus groups like mock trials, adversarial focus groups, a modified blend of adversarial or mock trial, and then also doing opening statement versus opening statement. So let’s just talk a little bit loosely about what each of these focus groups may entail.
So with mock trials and adversarial groups as well, these kind of go hand in hand. I think people sometimes there’s a distinction, maybe there’s not a distinction, but let’s just talk about from a very general sense. This is where you’re lining up a presentation of both sides. You may line up mock witnesses to come in.
You may have a mock judge that sits in and I think sometimes the distinction, maybe when you’re taking the vote, what really matters is that you’re actually putting the mock participants, the mock jurors through what they would see, right? The witnesses, the actual [00:03:00] testimony, maybe actual videos. Some folks wait until the very end to do a vote and have them deliberate.
Some people do votes along the way to see what is swaying them. It’s all about the points of what you’re looking at, when you’re taking these votes, what you’re voting on. Most of the time, the way that I run them is that we are going to take a vote after each piece of evidence or opening statements.
We’re just gauging people, if things are making a difference at all, and also kind of getting them used to making a decision, make a decision, make a decision, right? Get information from them and move on. And we’re not talking, and we’re really in adversarial, right? We’re talking about like passing the paper vote and picking back up from them.
Not allowing them to talk to each other to kind of poison it. The way That I’ve seen mock trials where there’ll be panels that watch the full presentation and then they’ll break out into their own room and have deliberation over the questions or the jury charge of the vote, if you will. Adversarial style generally just has [00:04:00] one group that is watching doing the voting along the way.
You could obviously have more panels of people, but I think a lot of what decision making goes into the style of focus group is directly related to the budget that you have to spend when it comes to that, obviously more people that you’re going to have different panels, locations. There’s a lot of logistics that go into setting up large panels of folks, breakout rooms, all that kind of stuff.
Now, That’s going to give you a lot of information in one day, right? So time wise, you are really making good use of time because you’re doing all your panels in one day with 40 different people versus sometimes folks will do an adversarial here and maybe they’ll wait and we’ll do another adversarial, right?
So then you have two panels of people and not necessarily have three to four different panels. And I think it’s just a matter of gathering the information of when you’re doing it. Let’s talk a little bit of a modified [00:05:00] approach to a mock trial or an adversarial group, and that would be where you’re going to show evidence, but it’s not going to be live witnesses or even long periods of witness testimony.
So the way that we’ve done is we’ve had abbreviated opening statements. And then basically have presentation of evidence. Now you could have it be general presentation of evidence. And what I mean by that is you could just compile a presentation that has witnesses for both sides, documents for both sides, basically the evidence that would come in, but it’s not necessarily going to be 100 percent slanted with a direct and a cross like you would see in a mock.
So you’re just going to give them the information, they’re going to vote again, and you could do a mini closing. As well with that, I’ve also seen it done where we’ve done opening statements and then we do just testimony that would be clips of the main witnesses voting on witness credibility as they’re going through that and then doing a closing statement.[00:06:00]
It makes it a little easier versus doing a full mock trial or adversarial because we’re compiling that middle part into a pretty clean presentation with a lot less people involved, not necessarily direct across like I talked about. And also you can’t put in all your witnesses. It’s just, that’s just what can happen overall.
So that’s kind of a modified mock trial or adversarial setup where we’re giving them more than opening statement, but we’re still not giving them the full. full thing and there’s not as much advocacy obviously involved when we’re just playing in the evidence and video statements. And of course, the other one to do for a trial would be opening statement versus opening statement, the plaintiff’s opening statement followed by a defendant’s opening statement, and then discussion just based on opening statements.
I obviously think that that one is super easy and it can be replicated, done it multiple times. I think one of the Folks, we’ve had on the podcast was Ryan Squires and we have done that for his trial preparation. We just did three of those, [00:07:00] of course, strung along different timeframes. Each one was a little different because of the time they’d got a little further down the road.
Some motions had been heard, things were decided. And so they were able to really lock in and. Get that opening statement done. So it was very helpful for them in that case. I think that trial ended up a 40 million dollar verdict and they were very at ease because the opening statement was pretty much done.
They had really locked it in and done a lot of legwork on getting that done. So I always support that as a good, if you are budget conscious, you can even do that one virtually, which makes it really convenient and really budget friendly to do that opening statement versus opening statement. If you got to get super creative, right, you can record those and then play them.
So there are lots of ways to prepare for trial. And I think what ends up stumping people sometimes is one, the amount of preparation that goes into these types of focus groups is a lot. It’s a lot for the lawyer [00:08:00] and their staff because you’re really getting ready, which makes it great for you because you’re You’re putting your mindset there.
You’re organizing materials. You’re actually putting to pen to paper for opening statements. So it’s very, very helpful. It is very, very labor intensive though. And then of course, these mock trials, the adversarials, these are all day, even modified ones. Those are, these are, we’re talking about six, seven, eight hours.
These are all day time commitments as well. So they’re very time intensive. They’re very budget intensive. I would say opening statement versus opening statement can be pretty quickly. We can, you can get it done in two, three hours. And again, that really depends on how much discussion time you’re going to have with them.
Folks, and the depth of information you’re going to give them in those opening statements. The purpose is you’re going to trial. So yeah, you really want to make sure you’re really committed. You’re doing the legwork to do it. And then also you’re putting a lot of thought into the style of focus group that you’re going to have and the information that you need.
One of the other stumpers that comes to some of these focus groups is when you have [00:09:00] pending motions and you don’t know which way the judge is going to go with information, right? This information coming in, or is it not? Is this witness excluded, or are they not? Generally, the safe bet is to go with whatever the opposite is, right?
So if it’s your motion to exclude something, just go and act like your motion’s going to fail. If it’s their motion, just go and act like it’s going to be successful, right? So you want to focus group the worst case scenario, because That’s really what you want to know. Worst case scenario, how do we fare out?
So that’s also, I think, a helpful thing when we’re, that can sometimes roadblock people in their minds. Well, I don’t know what this, the outcome of this motion is. So I don’t want to run a focus group. And I think that that kind of can hedge you off from doing the focus group, which is quality and getting you ready, but also getting that feedback.
And that very small thing could be maybe blocking your mind. Well, I can’t run one if I don’t have, X information. Sure, [00:10:00] absolutely you can. You don’t have to necessarily put that information in or you can just do a different style of focus group that you feel comfortable with. Another one where people are getting ready, doing demonstratives, I mean that’s one that can be done just based on the demonstratives, how helpful are they, do they need to be changed, anything before a trial.
I think those are really great because we can spend a lot of money on demonstrative evidence visuals. And so you definitely want to make sure that they make sense to the jury before you get there. Of course, you got to do that legwork to get it in, right, make it admissible. But then you don’t want to bring something to court that is just as confusing as it is expensive.
Alright, so this was a super quick episode, but I just wanted to kind of cap off. We’re going to probably have a few more folks and a few more guests come in to talk about some other topics, cross exam, doctors, probably have some folks come in and talk about visuals again because I think they’re really important.
But this was supposed to be a short episode just to kind of recap focus groups specifically for trial. Talking about mock [00:11:00] trials, adversarial focus groups, doing kind of a modified version of those to get that information out and then opening, same for opening statement. All of this, of course, kind of hinges on how big is the case, what are the issues in the case, what is my budget, costs, and what are my concerns that I’m trying to allay.
If it is presentation concerns, then we’re going to really look at probably just doing presentation style, meaning let’s just do jury selection, opening statement, paired up together, right? Just getting on your feet versus content and then full risk assessment, I would say, for the mock trial and adversarial focus groups.
All right, well, I hope that you found this episode helpful. If you did, please rate and review it. Also, if you could, there’s a little plus sign up in the corner. If you could push that and follow the podcast, that would greatly help the podcast and other people find it. Until next time. Thank [00:12:00] you.