DIY Focus Groups with Clint Schumacher
Imagine being able to improve your trial practice by utilizing DIY focus groups – well, that’s exactly what our guest, Clint Schumacher, has been doing. As an attorney specializing in eminent domain cases, Clint shares his fascinating journey of implementing focus groups to enhance his practice, and how Zoom has become an essential tool in facilitating them. We also take a deep dive into recruitment strategies, discussing the importance of finding the right participants and sharing the tips and tricks Clint has learned along the way.
When it comes to condemnation cases, people’s emotional reactions are often at the forefront. Clint and I discuss the complexities of these cases, the inherent bias against the government taking property, and how to gauge the emotional value of a particular property case in order to better communicate with the jury. We also explore the scaling question, which measures how much people care about the case, as well as the importance of communicating facts clearly in focus groups.
Setting up a virtual focus group may seem daunting, but we cover everything you need to know, from the geographic area to be sampled to the recruitment process and the electronic confidentiality form used. We also discuss the challenges of finding participants in rural areas and how Clint and his team have been successful in using Facebook ads and Google forms for recruitment. Finally, we touch on the challenges of virtual focus groups, the strategies needed to handle them, and the undeniable importance of focus groups for trial lawyers. Don’t miss this engaging and informative conversation!
In this episode, you will hear:
- DIY focus groups for trial lawyers
- Measuring emotional engagement in focus groups
- Virtual focus group process and challenges
- Managing remote meeting disruptions
- DIY focus groups for lawyers
Supporting Resources: If you’d like to know more about my guest Clint Schumacher, please visit his podcast or website.
DAWSON & SODD, PLLC
8333 Douglas Avenue #380
Dallas, Texas 75225
Email: clint@dawsonsodd.com
Phone: 214-373-8181
Fax: 214-217-4230
Licensed in Texas and Oklahoma
Clint has represented property owners of all sizes that are being impacted by public projects. Over the last twenty years, Clint has developed a particular expertise in condemnation for highway projects. He is able both to work with the condemning authority to try to minimize impacts and, when that fails, to seek full compensation for the owner. He will often recognize what others miss. His varied client list includes Fortune 500 companies, Wall Street investment firms, national restaurant brands, international hotel chains, individual investors, developers, and families. Before joining Dawson & Sodd, Clint represented regional toll authorities and mass-transit authorities in some of the largest projects in north Texas.
Clint continually seeks to build on his extensive litigation experience by studying and practicing the art of effective advocacy. This dedication to excellence has led him to being named as a Texas Super Lawyer in Eminent Domain by Texas Lawyer magazine (a Thomson Reuters publication) in 2014-22 and to being recognized by D Magazine as one of the top lawyers in Dallas.
Clint is the host of The Eminent Domain Podcast which can be found on ITunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or at its home website: www.eminentdomainpodcast.com. The podcast covers all things eminent domain and reaches listeners across the U.S. and in several foreign countries.
Episode Credits:
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com Let them know I sent you.
Transcript Episode:
Elizabeth Larrick:
Hi there, Elizabeth here. I wanted to pop in before our episode begins to introduce our very wonderful guest, Clint Schumacher. Clint practices in the eminent domain area. Specifically, he helps individuals and companies who are having problems with [00:01:00] the government taking their property. So Clint has been doing this really specialized work for the past 20 years.
He has his own podcast. If you were interested called the eminent domain podcast, Clint reached out to me about focus groups. He started his own focus groups and had some questions and I was happy to help him. And then I said, Hey, why don’t you come on the podcast? So I hope you enjoy this interview with Clint.
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. My name is Elizabeth Larrick. I’m your host for Trial Lawyer Prep and this is a podcast dedicated to lawyers preparing for trial or preparing cases better to get better results. We generally like to talk about focus groups, and so I’ve brought a guest on here who has started his own DIY focus groups, which I know I encourage people to do.
If you’ve been tuning in here lately, the past couple episodes we have really been trying to talk about focus groups, setting them up. I heard from my recruiter, we had a replay about like when to do focus groups, six good times. So I hope this is helpful, but I really wanted to bring Clint [00:02:00] Schumacher on because he has started his own DIY focus groups.
And I thought it would be great to bring him on to talk about it and see how it’s helping his practice. Hello and welcome to the
Clint Schumacher: Well, Elizabeth, thank you. Thanks for having me join. I have been a avid listener to your podcast. They’ve been extremely helpful to me. So hopefully I can pass something along to your audience that may be helpful to them.
Elizabeth Larrick: I appreciate that. Now, as you all probably heard in the intro, Clint has his own podcast. It deals with property, which was one of my worst classes in law school. So I can’t quite say that I can help with that at all. But I know that you are here to give some good advice and some sound feedback on doing your own focus groups.
But Let’s get started from the very jump. What even got you interested in doing focus groups? How does that mesh?
Clint Schumacher: I do have a really specific practice niche. We represent property owners that are having their property taken by the government condemnation or imminent domain cases. And so early in my career, I had some excellent Mentors [00:03:00] who, when the case was right, encouraged using a jury consultant and have had a lot of experience working with jury consultants in the past and have done focus groups and mock trials with jury consultants.
But Elizabeth, as you and your audience know, that can be very expensive and not every case warrants that expenditure. And so I have seen the value of it, but have often shied away from it in all, but the largest cases. Because of the expense associated with it, then during the pandemic, you know, everybody’s life changed a little bit.
And as I started networking and listening to really personal injury lawyers who had very good practices, I listened to them talk about how they were doing their own focus groups. And. That you could do it a lot more economically and get tremendous feedback. And then as the country started figuring out how to use zoom and lawyers started to [00:04:00] incorporate using zoom in their focus groups or a similar tool, Microsoft teams, whatever, into their focus groups and the added.
Convenience the additional shaving off of cost. I was intrigued and I figured out this is really powerful. You get a lot out of it. And if I can figure out how to do it at a price point, that makes sense for cases that I might have and be able to do multiple of them, then wow, that could be really impactful to the.
Practice and really helpful to the clients. And so as we, and my team are starting to figure out how to do that, we’ve actually found your podcast and listen to some of the tips that you had for doing it yourself and they have been enormously helpful. I think we, and my team reached out to you even, and you’re very helpful to give us some specific tips and that’s been very helpful to us.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, we reached out about recruiting and that’s probably one of the number one questions that I always get, which is like, how do you find these folks? Always happy to help. And I’m excited to hear that. I think a lot of people learning zoom in the pandemic [00:05:00] was already a challenge. That was already new for lawyers.
So then. Learning the second layer of doing focus groups online virtually is a whole nother one. So how do you feel like you’re doing? How do you feel like the team’s doing as far as putting on the focus groups?
Clint Schumacher: So definitely a learning curve. As you said, I think recruiting is probably the most intimidating part of it.
Figuring out how do we find people that are qualified and helpful. We started. Really do and do it yourself, I would say a year ago, and we’ve gotten better as the year goes at figuring out, okay, what works, what doesn’t work, how can we get the right people in? And I think we’re obviously we’re still continuing to learn, but we’re really starting to hit our stride.
And we try to do at least one a month. I know there’s probably people that do more, but one a month seems about right for us. And we’re starting to get it figured out. It’s not as hard as it may seem.
Elizabeth Larrick: It can be a little scary. I can remember my first one. We had three people
Clint Schumacher: understand.
Elizabeth Larrick: But we did a short one.
We just did two hours, I want to say. [00:06:00] And it was like, okay, that felt a little painful because you got to get through. It’s not just, okay, get them in there. Like it’s navigating the technology and keeping people engaged and keeping the flow of conversation going as well. So you’re setting up a system, but also you’ve got to learn moderating and putting stuff together too.
So how is, as far as. Do you normally do the moderating or do somebody else in your office do it? Or how do you guys split up that work?
Clint Schumacher: So when I was coming up watching jury consultants do it, the jury consultant would do it. So that was the model that I was used to when I first started trying to do it self focus groups, I was doing it in tandem with another lawyer here in town.
I practice in Dallas, and there was another lawyer I was having this conversation with. He’s, yeah, we’ve been doing these for a while. I would love to moderate yours. You can come participate in mine. And so he moderated ours. For a bit, we’ve tried it with kind of another, there’s another, I would say, jury consultant that works remotely that we’ve had moderate one [00:07:00] recently, but I’ve gotten to the point where I feel like it’s best if I moderate them because I know what questions I want to ask.
And I can hear what the. Focus group is saying and direct questions into things that I know are going to tie into the case. The obvious downside to doing that is remaining neutral. And I don’t always do that perfectly, but I’ve gotten to where I’m most comfortable just moderating them myself. And I know that I can get it.
If something comes up in the focus group, that’s unexpected. I can adjust a lot more easily than if there’s another moderator that’s involved.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, I would say when I was talking to another friend of mine about focus groups and one of the gems of doing focus groups consistently and. Even if you are just listening, right?
Being moderating helps, but you get into a really good habit of taking bad news. Because you’re inevitably going to get, like, you, and you get to where that fight, that, that real, that fight, that defensiveness [00:08:00] that comes up, that urge to convince, it just goes down and goes to a point where you can listen, stay curious, stay curious.
And not get completely, Oh, I want to, I want to convince this person, but yeah, you get used to hearing bad stuff every time. And I’ll
Clint Schumacher: tell you the last time I did a Vordire and forgive me for all your non Texas residents, but Vordire is how we say it here. So forgive me if I am not sounding, that doesn’t sound correct.
I noticed that I was a lot less, I’m going to say inflamed. I’m not sure if that’s the right word, but when that juror is giving you something that you know is not going to be good for your case, I think we probably all feel our temperature start to rise and the anxiety start to rise. And I noticed the last four dire I did, I was a lot Better at keeping that feeling at bay.
And I think it was because I had moderated some groups before then. And as you say, you get used to hearing the bad news. You’re not taking it personally. And you learn, gosh, when you’re doing the board, are you that that’s gold? If somebody is [00:09:00] going to tell you they don’t like your case, that’s gold. And not being able to get overly passionate and to remain dispassionate, to be able to hear with them, deal with that, figure out who else feels the same way, that was a big help.
Elizabeth Larrick: Absolutely. It’s a very good skill to learn because in litigation, you’re always going to hear the bad news from the other side and sometimes it can be legit, but you’re such an advocate. So I always think focus groups help you prepare for hearing bad news, being able to listen to it. Stay curious. You don’t have to take it like you said, don’t take it personally.
But then when jury selection comes, it’s like, Oh, cool. I’ve heard this before. Oh, cool. Another one of those people. Cool. Weird. Tell me a little more about that. Like you said,
Clint Schumacher: do you, do you moderate your own groups?
Elizabeth Larrick: Oh yeah. Oh definitely.
Clint Schumacher: Okay.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, and I, of course, it’s been several years and I do several months, but yeah, so it just got to where it was just like, oh, okay, okay.
You know, like I hear bad stuff all the time, and what I always strived for when I started [00:10:00] was just staying curious and also. You got to nail down that poker face. You’ve got to nail down that. Okay.
Clint Schumacher: Oh
Elizabeth Larrick: yeah. Okay. And then you just kind of like, okay. You know what I mean? And it’s, you start to, okay. And you can always tell somebody who, and again.
I’m just saying, throwing this out there. If you’re having this issue, just so you know, this is kind of where it’s coming from is I’ll have people who come in and I’ll set a focus group and people will come use my space or we’ll do the virtual focus group and the followup that always gives the little cringes, what if you heard, and you’re like, Oh, like your bias immediately comes out.
So it’s just a skill to learn. And I think it really makes you. Such a more well rounded lawyer just in practice and just probably in life to hear like, Of course people are gonna disagree with you and do you really need to try and convince them of your But tell me a little bit about, let’s get back to yours.
So how, tell me about [00:11:00] how has focus groups or how have focus groups helped your practice? in particular.
Clint Schumacher: So probably not anything that’s earth shattering. But gosh, what I’m going to say is not earth shattering. The information we get sometimes is, but it helps me see things that I’m blind to. Right. So I inevitably almost every time they ask questions or think about things that I had not ever focused on or thought were important.
And so that’s always a big takeaway to hear their feedback on that subject. But then a lot of times, if there’s a key. Issue in the case or two or three key issues in the case to get their feedback, not only on how they feel about that, which is obviously important, but if someone were to present evidence about that at trial, who would you expect to talk about it?
In other words, Is this going to be a fact, is this going to come out of a fact witness or is this going to come out of an expert witness? And what is their expectation about that in what we do, which is very heavily expert [00:12:00] driven, that’s been a really helpful thing to hear that, Hey, that’s something that really our client or whoever the fact witnesses needs to cover as opposed to having our expert evaluation person talk about that.
So that’s been a big piece of it too.
Elizabeth Larrick: I would assume, and again, this is my assumption because I don’t know any, that a lot of what you’re trying to understand is what do people even know about condemnation and what are their kind of attitudes about it, and have you found any kind of universal assumptions people are making?
Clint Schumacher: Absolutely. So there is generally a bias against the government taking property, and There are a fair number of people in the population that don’t think that’s even allowed or permitted. So they’re surprised to find out that can even happen. But then inevitably, one of the things that we always try to gauge in our focus group is how passionately do they feel about it in this particular circumstance.
And so if you’re taking property from a family and that land has been in the family for four [00:13:00] generations, you can imagine people. They have a sense of emotion that’s tied to that, and it’s very different from, say, a commercial piece of property that someone has owned for 10 years and their business is on it, or they rent it out to someone else.
Those can elicit different sets of feelings, and so one of the things that we or I say, should say I, I kind of subscribe to the reptile theory even in our property cases, and inevitably if we can communicate with the jury at an emotional level. That’s going to help us and one of the things I’ve got to gauge in every case is how emotionally connected does this group feel to this set of facts in this particular piece of property.
And so that’s always helpful to us to see, do we have a case that really drives that or is this one that they’re like, eh, it’s not a big deal. Are
Elizabeth Larrick: you scaling that or are you? Doing a word association with that, give us a little bit more. And I’m happy to share how I gauge emotional, the emotional value or the emotional engagement, if you will, with folks [00:14:00] group,
Clint Schumacher: actually, I really want to hear your feedback about that.
Cause I don’t know that I have a good system to do that. It’s really, I feel right now it’s just my field, like how involved are they? So how much feedback are they giving me? And we normally will do a two hour focus group and we’ll have two different cases. And you can tell they’re a lot more emotionally connected to one than to another.
But I don’t know that it’s systemized. And so if there’s a way to do that, I am all ears.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah. I did not create this by the way, to totally did not create this. It’s just a scaling question on a scale of one to 10. How much do you care about what happened here?
Clint Schumacher: Oh, that’s a good idea. Yeah, that’s a good idea.