Hey Lawyers, You Don’t Need a Psych Degree to Run a Focus Group! [Ep 141]
In this episode of Trial Lawyer Prep, Elizabeth Larrick discusses the importance of focus groups for lawyers and dispels the myth that a psychology degree is necessary to conduct them. She outlines three key steps to running effective focus groups: having a clear goal, making a plan, and doing a test run of the presentation. Larrick emphasizes the need for lawyers to prepare adequately to avoid confusion and ensure they receive valuable feedback. She also addresses the issue of bias and encourages lawyers to seek help if they feel too biased to run a focus group themselves.
Takeaways:
- You don’t need a psych degree to run a focus group.
- Having a clear goal is essential for focus groups.
- Planning is crucial to avoid confusion during focus groups.
- A test run can help identify issues in your presentation.
- Lawyers often talk too much and don’t listen enough.
Check out my detailed blog about planning and moderating your own virtual focus groups.
Episode Transcript
Elizabeth Larrick (00:25.016)
Are you putting barriers to starting your own focus groups? Maybe you think you need to be qualified or have some kind of certification before you start? Well tune into this episode and we’ll give you the answer so you can get going right away.
Hello and welcome to Trial Lawyer Prep. I’m your host, Elizabeth Larrick, and we are here to talk all things preparation. That would be trial prep, trial strategy, focus groups, witness prep, persuasion, courtroom tactics. We are glad that you are here. In this episode, I wanna bust down a myth that you don’t need to have a psych degree in order to run your own focus groups.
Because I want every lawyer to be running their own focus groups to make better decisions in their cases. If we run focus groups, we can have better direction for where we’re taking our claims. We can have a better understanding of how jurors think about things, because guess what? Lawyers don’t think the same way as jurors. And also I want you to have the confidence that people gain from hearing others talk about their case. So.
I don’t want you to place any extra barriers in your way. And what I have heard many times talking to folks, talking to lawyers about doing focus groups and really specifically, it’s a question people always ask me. Well, do you have a psych degree? I don’t, but I do have training and that’s what we talk about a lot here to be able to do focus groups in a way.
So I want to use this episode to give you the three things that you can do right now so you can get over that hurdle that you don’t necessarily have a psych degree, you don’t have any special thoughts or training. Listen, the purpose of a focus group is to get an outside perspective. So there are three things you can do before you begin to help you prepare yourself for a positive and successful focus group.
Elizabeth Larrick (02:32.008)
So number one, you want to make sure you have a clear goal in mind. Many times lawyers come to me and they’re not really sure the case has several different issues, but we always want to be able to prioritize what is the thing you need to know right now. What is the decision that you’re having to make right now? Maybe it’s about settlement. Maybe it’s about moving towards spending extra money on experts or trial, or maybe it’s about taking more depositions.
or pursuing a specific kind of claim, either way, you wanna be able to have a goal in mind. I want feedback on this issue. I want feedback on that issue. When we run virtual focus groups, we look at the collective amount of time that we have, and I tell lawyers point blank, you only have time for one issue, or you only have time for two issues. Or if you’re really just looking for general feedback, like that’s fine, but.
I think it’s much better if we have a goal in mind. Because once we have our goal in mind, that will then set us up to be able to prepare and plan better. Which is number two thing that you need when you’re starting to do focus groups, or if you’re already doing focus groups, having number one, a clear goal, and number two, having a plan. Now, I see too many lawyers come in and just completely wing it. And let me tell ya.
It is not helpful because what ends up happening is you, the lawyer, talk way more than our participants. You end up bombarding them with tons of information. Sometimes it’s organized, sometimes it’s not, but really you spend most of the time just talking and not listening. And so a plan can really help us understand we have our goal in mind. Let’s take an example. Let’s say it’s liability. Let’s say it’s a red light.
he said, she said, she said, he said kind of situation. And you really need to figure out who are they gonna believe. Okay, well that’s our one, our goal is to figure out what are we do on liability here with our swearing match? And so we have a plan. Do we approach it neutrally? Do we approach it from one side only? Do we approach it from two sides? Having that plan and knowing, okay, here’s where we’re gonna go. We’re gonna be neutral, Elizabeth, okay.
Elizabeth Larrick (04:54.654)
So let’s get all of our facts and let’s put them in a neutral light. Okay, now that may be difficult for you to do and that’s okay, but what we wanna make sure that we’re doing is we have a plan with how much information we’re gonna give, what we’re gonna stay away from, which is super important, because many times people wanna add in that extra fact that maybe it’s not even allowed into evidence. My example in a liability case is people always wanna talk about in a regular.
car crash case, people not having a driver’s license, which is not admissible in Texas. And it, I’ve seen it happen and it just tanks the whole focus group, okay, which means it makes it unreliable feedback. You always wanna have reliable feedback. And if you have got a clear goal in mind, you’re making a plan, and then finally, before you even get started, you do a test run of your presentation.
So I want to give a good example here where I had a younger lawyer who’s coming to me. He’s got two hours to go He’s got a pretty complicated electrocution case With a couple of holes in the facts. They’re just not ever able to fill there were no eyewitnesses And so he creates PowerPoint we walk through it together And I give some ideas I tell him hands a little too much information and to go fix a few of these things Well, he comes to the focus group and it was very clear he had not run through the PowerPoint before he turned on the Zoom to join with people because he just rambled and rambled and went on. And unfortunately, it became very confusing for the group. And so it was difficult to get good feedback when people are just confused. It’s kind of a, I’ll just say it, it’s a cop out. Like, I don’t understand, I’m confused. Or the other one is, well, I have so many more questions.
I wouldn’t be able to answer how I feel or what I think about it because I have so many questions, right? I don’t want that to happen to you, okay? Psych degree or not, that’s just kinda what happens when we get into a place where we’re not really sure. We just end up talking a little more, lawyer or not, it just happens. So, I want you to be able to do a test run before you jump into that focus group because we don’t wanna miss anything.
Elizabeth Larrick (07:10.562)
but also we wanna make sure that we fix anything in our presentation that may need to be fixed. There are plenty of times where I put together a PowerPoint, get going, and I do a test run and I realize, whoa, all these animations are off or there is no animation so they can’t see everything. A test run is a great way and it doesn’t take long. You could just go through your slide deck and then you’re done, right? Just print out your materials and read through it. That is what I mean by a test run. It doesn’t have to be difficult. But what you will find is, I could say that
with a little more clarity. I can see that we need to add a little more information here or look at me, I’m adding in an extra issue that I may be worried about that we didn’t put into our plan. So it’s really helpful also to avoid wasting any time in a focus group. If you have all of your visuals ready, then you don’t waste any time going to find them or making sure that they work. I’ve seen this happen, unfortunately, too many times where people say, well, I have this picture I want to show you.
but they don’t have it ready. Or they realize, oh wait, I have another one I wanna show you and they have to go find it, right? Well, all that time that they’re just sitting there staring, right? That’s time that we’re not getting feedback. So I really want you to do a test run to avoid wasting time. So we’ve got our three things that you need to make you feel a little better, get over that barrier of starting a focused group. Number one, have a clear goal in mind. Number two, make a plan. And number three, do a test run.
Okay, now that’s all gonna get you over that hump of getting that thing started and then that feedback is just gonna roll on in. And from there, it’s just making sure that we don’t pull ourselves back into a place of arguing with others. And that’s a real common pitfall I wanna talk about. Many lawyers come to me and they say, oh, I’m fine, I know this case forward and backwards, I don’t really need to plan, it’ll just come out naturally. Well, what ends up happening is again, you bombard them with so many facts.
and there’s not a lot of clear organization, because your brain’s jumping around to all the different issues that ends up getting so confusing that you don’t really get any good feedback. I also remind people, you would never walk into court without having a clear plan, a clear opening statement, even at a minimum, an outline, because you don’t have an unlimited amount of time.
Elizabeth Larrick (09:32.782)
to talk to these jurors so you always have a plan in mind, an organization. So why would you walk in a folks group without a plan? Okay, the other thing that I hear or a common pitfall that I see is assuming people are a natural presenter. Oh, it’s very natural for me. I don’t really need to do a test run. Again, we run into rambling and also a little bit of a hitch in the get up. If there is a problem, then a little bit of panic sets in.
And again, I don’t want you to worry about wasting the time when you could be getting feedback. So having that test run solves that whole problem. So you may be thinking though, Elizabeth, if we do all of this, what if you realized, you know what, at the end of the day, I am just way too biased. Like I’m gonna end up arguing with somebody or I’m so entrenched that I’m gonna start asking questions like.
Well, what if you knew about this fact? Or what if hypothetically this thing happened, right? All those questions are you putting your finger on the scale and weighing them down to bias it. So that is an excellent question to be asking yourself, is am I too biased to even do a focus group? Because, again, the purpose is to find the information, not argue with the people. You don’t always wanna win, sometimes you just need to do the research.
then you can always find somebody else in your office that can run the focus group or you can hire someone. I don’t know if you know this, but this is something that I do. But also I help people, for example, in some of my focus groups, I help people be able to get through that bias and teach themselves how to get information without revealing their bias. Again, this is where it goes back to our whole theme here. You don’t need a psychic degree to run a focus group. You need a plan.
You need a clear goal and you need to do a test run just to double check yourself and make sure that you’re giving them all the information in the correct way. All right, if you are curious about more information on planning and preparing for a focus group, I’ve written an in-detail blog that I will put a link to in the show notes if you want more information. And of course, naturally, if you need more help,
Elizabeth Larrick (11:48.14)
Don’t hesitate to book a call with me about focus groups. I’m always here and generous with my time to make sure that you can get what you need from a focus group. All right, I hope this episode was helpful and until next time, thank you.