It’s your favorite episodes, topics and themes from Trial Lawyer Prep in 2025, as reflected by the data: you know how much we love facts!
I look at what you enjoyed the most, and why, with all the links below if you want to revisit or catch up on these episodes and their valuable information.
I’m excited in 2026 to bring you more content on trial strategy, more inspiring guests, and useful tools that help us in our preparation as trial lawyers. I love providing advice and insight to help you present the best case possible, whether you’re a long time listener or brand new to the podcast.
And if you want to start off 2026 with a focus group, or you’re curious about it, don’t forget to book a free consultation call:
www.calendly.com/elizabethlarrick
In this episode:
- Discover the most popular episodes of 2025, based on your engagement.
- Learn what were the three most listened-to topics of the year.
- Find out why lawyers often underutilize their own focus group insights.
- Remember that early focus groups can help in strategic thinking.
- Going through focus group transcripts can hold valuable insights for lawyers.
- Why the eight-second rule is vital for grabbing attention.
Top Guest Episodes:
Sharif Gray: Challenging Traditional Jury Selection Methods Ep 149
Ben Gideon: How Trial Lawyers can Better Assess Risk Ep 138
Dina Cataldo: Trial Management for Trial Lawyers Ep 133
Top Topic Episodes:
The 8 Second Rule That’s Costing You Verdicts Ep 144
Rewiring Witness Prep: 3 Brain Science Strategies Every Trial Lawyer Needs [Ep 143]
What Trial Strategy Is and What it is Not Ep 131
You can also watch this episode on my YouTube Channel:
What Trial Lawyers Loved in 2025: Guests, Topics & Focus Group Trends [Ep 156]
Have a trial or mediation coming up and want to test with a focus group? Book a free consultation call with Elizabeth to learn more:
Don’t miss out on the Trial Lawyer Prep Newsletter that is delivered right to your email with extra tips and ‘how to’ information. Join the newsletter here:
Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick (00:00.268)
Welcome to Trial Lawyer Prep, where trial lawyers learn how to better connect with clients and juries, gather tips and strategies for better persuasion, and how to use focus groups in the process. I’m your host, Elizabeth Larrick, and in today’s episode, we’re going to tell you what trial lawyers wanted to hear in 2025.
2025 is wrapping up and before we head into the new year, I wanna look back at what resonated with you and more importantly, what I learned from the dozens and dozens of focus groups that were conducted this year that I think every trial lawyer needs to know. You made some clear choices about what you wanted to hear. So let’s jump into your top picks from the podcast and then move into the patterns that I saw.
Top pick for the podcast was guest episodes. Now, these were fantastic episodes about jury selection, assessing risk, and even time management. So our top picks were episode 149 with Sharif Gray, where he and I talked about challenging traditional Voydier methods with research-backed alternatives. Another great episode was 138 with guest Ben Gideon.
where he talked about assessing risk for trial lawyers, a few tools to do that, and also Dina Cataldo’s episode 133, which was time management for lawyers. Now, these were topics not by me, but by consumption rates, which were over 75 % for each of these episodes, which tells me you enjoyed them and got wonderful pieces of advice from them. So a link will be in the show notes for each of those episodes.
Now, another top thing that came out of the podcast this year were three specific topics, again, with our statistics not lying over 80 % consumption. So we saw trial strategy, witness prep, and persuasion as the top listen to topics, but let’s dive into those specific episodes. So if you wanna go back and re-listen, you certainly can. For trial strategy, we had episode 131. What is trial strategy and what it is not?
Elizabeth Larrick (02:21.166)
This clarified the difference between strategy and tactics, which is a pretty big one for lawyers. But one of the key takeaways was doing our strategic thinking early with focus groups. Now, this brings me to something that I see almost every year, but especially in 2025 as even more lawyers went to trial, was waiting to do those focus groups in the 30 to 45 days before trial.
And this is where we could be missing out on testing things early in order to make corrections. This is exactly why I encourage lawyers to run early focus groups during discovery. When you can test strategic frames, try some tactics if you want early though, so you can course correct before you’re locked in. If you’re heading in a 2026 with a trial scheduled or a big one going to mediation,
and you want some strategic clarity, let’s talk about scheduling a focus group. You can book a free consultation call with a link in the show notes. Now moving to witness prep, we had episode 143, which was rewiring your witness prep with brain science. This was a great episode. If you have a deposition coming up or even a trial with how to make your witness prep more effective with three simple tips. And again, that link will be in the show notes.
And finally, our top episode for persuasion was episode 144, the eight second rule. This taps into the what we know to be so true, but primacy. We have about eight seconds to grab attention and then the next 43 to keep it. If we don’t get our audience’s attention during that timeframe, it is an uphill battle to get them to hear what we are saying and also understand it.
And that’s for any audience that we’re talking to, jurors, judges, mediators, even your client. So this was a great episode and the link will be in the show notes. This particular primacy point is something that I talk about often. And a recent post on LinkedIn that a lot of people appreciated was a story I told about a lawyer who was practicing their opening statement with me and started out with reciting a piece of law from a very famous law professor.
Elizabeth Larrick (04:45.186)
And I had to stop him because people were going to be lost, right? The judge would have been lost, jurors would have been lost. And what happens is our brain is trying to figure out what is he saying and why is he saying? And while our brains walk around confused trying to figure out what they’re saying, they don’t hear anything else in your opening statement. So we don’t wanna do that. So I stopped that lawyer. We went back and refashioned that opening to make sure we…
grabbed that eight seconds, kept him for the 43. His opening started with the bang and he felt so confident in the point he was making in that first minute that he was able to echo it. Again, demonstrating this is important, y’all. We’re gonna say it again throughout the trial. So we wanna start out with a bang. We wanna grab that attention. That episode 144 is a great way to refresh on that point. Now,
let’s talk about the trends from focus groups in 2025. Again, over 75 focus groups conducted. And so these were some of our main takeaways that we saw. Number one, visual is always important, but the more fine-tuned point was comparison. So we see comparison in almost everything we do. Scroll on Instagram, going to pick a car, everything has a side-by-side comparison.
And so the pattern that came across from multiple focus groups was that jurors were really struggling to understand the both sides when it was just a verbal presentation or had a few visual aids. Commonly used visual aids that reiterated this point were property damage photos, right? They’re using those photos to compare to injuries, to compare to how people could explain how the crash happened.
Our brains love visuals. 60 % of our brain is dedicated to understanding visuals. So we love them. But also when we have that side by side comparison, we are making it easy. Our brains love it easy. And then it gets fast, right? So we want our audience to quickly be able to evaluate and find in our favor. So one of the things we’ve talked about is when we have a comparison, maybe it’s a
Elizabeth Larrick (07:02.69)
Fact pattern versus the safety rule or the standards or the norms. That’s a super important way to visualize that comparison for our audience, whether it could be jurors or even in our focus groups. But also another great one is experts. We see dueling experts in almost every large case, almost every case, there is a dueling expert. Maybe you have one, maybe they have one, right? They’re fighting it to the death. And a lot of times as lawyers, we put a lot of credence in what experts are saying.
focus groups, not so much. But a way to test it, because I know this is a strong point for many trial lawyers wanting to test experts. Are they gonna follow the other one? Are they gonna follow this one? What is it that they’re doing that maybe is swaying our jurors, doing a side-by-side comparison? Were you distilled down what the expert did, what their opinion is? Credentials don’t really matter, right? It’s really about what did they do and what was their opinion.
and distilling that down onto one PowerPoint slide or one visual significantly helps them be able to quickly evaluate and give you feedback. A helpful tip for focus groups, but also very helpful for a jury trial in that visual aid can be used again during cross and in closing. All right, let’s move to our second trend that came out of our focus groups, which was emotional detachment.
When I say emotional, mean like maybe they’re tragic facts, maybe they’re egregious defendant conduct, and it just fell flat, right? No emotional movement. This particular red flag was more predictive of a no juror, a juror you would not want, than some of our demographics. So tracking that early, putting some of those things in early to test emotional feedback and jury selection is one of the biggest tips that we saw.
But another piece of interpretation on that emotional flatness, occasionally, sometimes both, it detects our no-jurs, but also detects a big block that’s missing, a gap in education or just overall knowledge and experience. Story recently saw this where our jurors were falling completely flat. We had tragic facts. We had…
Elizabeth Larrick (09:24.15)
a defendant clearly ignoring safety rules and a safety altogether, but nothing was jiving. As the discussion kept going on and the feedback continued, it became apparent that they were very clueless about the industry of the defendant. So we said, all right, what’s our takeaway? We got to educate early and often just to make sure they’re not making the wrong assumptions about this industry or comparing it to industries that are completely skewed.
and would be skewed against you. Okay, our last trend from our focus groups would be lawyers underusing your focus group investment. I see this where lawyers will sit in, take notes. They’re super excited and enthused after we have our focus group strategy session and then nothing. They don’t go back and revisit the transcript or the focus group reports. And I know this because I am able to track.
when people are downloading and using those things. Now, this is a huge point for me because when I spent a year with the Keenan Law Firm, one of my largest takeaways was the goal that was lying in those focus group transcripts and reports. I do this for the reports for my clients, but also you can do this just with going back and rereading the transcripts. We would spend hours going back to focus group reports and transcripts in order to find, okay,
Let’s get back in there. What were they saying? What were the exact words? Can we work those words, those phrases into opening? Can we work those words and phrases into deposition questions? What was their attitude for against us? How do we use that to our benefit? Also, what were some of the main questions that they had when they were just talking, right? Free flow, conversation with them. Not necessarily that pointed what was missing here. Sometimes people draw a blank.
when we ask that question. But if you just go back and read through the transcript, you will see when things are missing, people naturally percolate. They’ll tell you that first, or it’ll naturally percolate for them in just conversation and then listening to other people as well. So that’s a huge point. We want to make sure we get from our focus group transcripts. We don’t miss it. So if you have something coming up in 2026 and you ran a focus group in 2025, go back, reread that transcript.
Elizabeth Larrick (11:48.576)
you will gleam so much more information out of that group. And again, this was a large investment, so let’s use it as much as we can. This just taps into the point that our brains can’t focus and concentrate on all things that are happening. We’re not going to see all the body language that’s going on. We’re not going to be able to take down a note and hear what every single person is saying. Again, that’s why that transcript is so helpful to make sure you didn’t miss anything. Okay, so let’s recap what you loved in 2025.
guest episodes, trial strategy, witness prep, persuasion, and our top trends from our focus group. Comparison, but use of a visual, emotional slattness, detecting that, and then also going back and reusing our focus groups and squeezing as much as we can out of that focus group investment by rereading those transcripts. Now, as we look ahead to 2026, I am very excited to bring you more content on trial strategy.
on guests, on other things that we can be doing to improve our preparation. Which brings me to don’t forget that I have an email newsletter that provides more how-to and tips. Once a month to your email inbox, you can sign up for that newsletter in the show notes. All right. Thank you so much for making 2025 so amazing for me. I love learning from you and I love providing what I can back to my long-time listeners.
and to folks who are just coming to the podcast. I appreciate either way, you being here. And if you want to start off 2026 with a focus group, you’re curious about it, don’t forget to book a link in the show notes. All right, until next time, thank you so much.
