The Plaintiff Lawyer Mindset Shift to Make When Running Your Focus Groups
Have you ever stepped into a focus group with the battle-ready mindset of a courtroom lawyer, only to realize it’s like bringing a sword to a tea party? Joins us to untangle the art of moderation, guiding attorneys through the key mindset shifts that can transform focus group feedback into pure gold for trial prep.
Understand the nuanced dance between asking questions and listening intently – emphasizing the power of neutrality and curiosity to coax out the raw, genuine insights that are so crucial to understanding how a jury might think. From a checklist that strips away legal jargon and biases, to the delicate skill of presenting cases in everyday language, this episode is a masterclass in the subtleties of legal research.
Whether you’re seasoned in the world of focus groups or stepping into this space for the first time, this conversation is a vital tool for any attorney looking to connect more deeply with clients and juries. Tune in and learn how to steer clear of confrontational instincts that can muddy the waters of valuable feedback, and how to lay the groundwork for focus groups that truly inform and enhance your trial strategies.
In this episode, you will hear:
- The need for lawyers to shift mindset to a neutral focus group moderator
- Techniques for bias-free legal focus group research
- Mock juries vs. focus groups in trial prep
- Using neutral language and open-ended questions for authentic feedback
- A detailed checklist for attorneys to organize and guide focus groups
- The value of focus groups in enhancing cases by understanding jury perspectives
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello, and welcome to the podcast trial lawyer prep. I’m your host, Elizabeth Larrick, and I’m glad that you’re here.
This episode, we are going to be talking about the mind set shift that needs to happen for focus groups. And what I’m really talking about and who I’m really talking [00:01:00] to is people who are running focus groups, and that’s different than mock juries and people who are interested. Maybe you’re going to get started doing a focus group.
You’re interested in doing virtual. This episode is for you. And we’re been doing a lot of episodes lately on virtual focus groups. So if you’ve just now listening in welcome, welcome, but also there’ve been several episodes that I’ve been doing lately, just to kind of talk about virtual and even as simple as doing a one hour virtual focus group.
So those are here pretty recently, just dropped in, I believe in March for that one or one. And then also just talking about with other lawyers here recently about doing virtual focus groups. And I think our last one had virtual plus. In person. So this episode is great for you if you’re just getting started, or maybe this episode is for you if you’ve been doing them, but maybe you’re just not getting enough information.
And so I do a lot of focus groups. Been doing [00:02:00] them for over eight years. I’ve got over a thousand hours a thou more than a thousand hours of focus group time under my belt. And what I see time and time again are some snafus, some things that maybe are holding us back as lawyers to get as much as we need out of focus groups.
So I thought this would be a really good episode to share some thoughts on it, but also I’ve got a little checklist for you, and we’re going to throw that in the show notes as well. But really, why is this important? And that’s because how we approach our focus group with our mindset really impacts how we present, what we present, and really how we’re moderating, asking questions, trying to get that discussion going.
And I see these really small, subtle things that happen because I have focus groups that I lead. But then I also focus groups that I put together that other lawyers lead and I’m there just as backup. [00:03:00] And so these are, you know, things that obviously I’ve made these mistakes before, but, you know, have been able to watch and correct.
And then also have other folks that I help and kind of coach along the way to help them do better focus groups. And I just want to pause. right here to say, this is different than a mock jury. Okay. If you’ve been listening to the podcast, looking at some of the things on my, on my website, you would see like, my goal is focus groups.
Okay. Because that’s the way that I have been taught, but also what I’ve seen really work well is the smaller size focus groups to basically research versus doing At end all be all, all day, six hour, one side versus the other side openings, fake judge, the whole thing. That’s a mock jury. And if you want to know more about the differences, I put together an episode that’s episode one Oh one, but also there’s a blog on my website as well.
So what we’re really talking about today though, is that focus group, and this is virtual. Or this is in [00:04:00] person. So either way, this mindset that we need to kind of shift into as lawyers, right? Or staff. I just don’t want to also say that too, because a lot of lawyers that I work with have staff members that either set them up or they’re a part of watching or even presenting.
And people do that because they know sometimes they’re just too passionate. And so having staff help and present is always a great way to do it. You know, if we have great staff, they also get impassioned and emboldened. And so sometimes this can happen. For us as well, we have a little bit of a mind shift and that’s kind of where I want to spend time today talking about because the key element of a focus group is that, you know, we remain neutral, open, curious, right?
We want to know more and we really want to make sure that we’re not exposing our preference or our bias. Unless that is the style of the focus group. But even so, thinking about moderating, asking questions, right? This is a really, again, key element. We want to make sure that we are remaining neutral and open to [00:05:00] make sure we get everybody’s thoughts.
Because we don’t want to immediately influence our group. When we do, right, we’re already queuing things one way or the other, and we really don’t want to try and influence folks that way if we’re trying to remain open and neutral and get more action. And that is a lot of what I use focus groups for, right?
We’re talking about doing just a neutral set of facts. What do you think? Maybe it’s just a concept, right? Stroke. What does that mean to you? Or maybe we’re talking about what, what kind of rules apply in a daycare? Right. Who goes to a daycare? Right. What age kids? And just to kind of get information and sometimes people like to practice.
What do you write? And other times we’re doing focus groups where we maybe we do have a slanted presentation. However, our moderation, right? Our questioning should be very neutral, right? So, yeah. There’s still going to be a mindset shift in here, okay? Because our goal is always to find and create the best case for the [00:06:00] jury, the folks that make the decision.
We can keep in our mindset the whole way, build the case up, thinking about what we think is safe. true, what we think will win. And it could be the complete opposite to the jury members. And then we just miss it. We don’t really understand it. And then we lose. And then they tell us in the hallway afterward.
So we want to avoid that. And that’s kind of why I’ve always used, when I read my own practice, I use focus groups for this exact thing. If I saw something that looked like red flag, right, then I’m like, okay, let me go take it to the folks group to see, is it a really a red flag? Do I need to work more on this?
Or is it not as bad? Right? Maybe there’s some facts in there that alleviate it. But either way, those focus groups were always a huge guideline for me for putting cases together. So let’s talk about our lawyer mindset, right? So when we talk about shifting our mindset, I’m talking about our lawyer mindset to a focus group research mindset.
So thinking about our lawyer minds and where they’re all created, right? Law school. [00:07:00] And that really has, makes a huge influence on our brains, including the language that we use, how we talk about things, and then we move into practice and everyone around us, right? Other lawyers, judges, the court, we’re all using the same kind of legalese.
talking about things that way. And then we kind of get also in another mindset of thinking about it very differently than regular people, but also thinking about like myself. And of course, other people who like personal injury work, plaintiff’s personal injury work, employment work, criminal law defense, right?
Your job is really to win and you’ve got a client who depends on you, but also you’re running a practice that needs to make me. And there’s always a little bit of, of risk. Right. Because we are on a contingency fee. So there is a lot of pressure going on to win to put together, you know, make the most money, you know, make the client happy.
And there’s also a lot of confrontation that goes in really at any level, right? [00:08:00] Lawyering confrontation comes in and kind of cross exam style. And that’s pretty normal to us, right? I mean, people are gonna, you get into the courtroom and guess what? You’ve got to stand up and state your side, right? Who you are, what are the claims, what are your, you know, so it’s always kind of this confrontational setup when you’re walking in to a presentation like that, either emotion or mediation or, you know, Even getting on the phone with opposing counsel, you’re constantly confronting somebody who’s is on the opposite side, or you’re having to basically pick your side out there.
When we talk about a focus group or research mindset, we’re really turning that to an non confrontational, neutral learning, right? Whereas the lawyer mindset is to win, right? Our research, our focus group mindset is just to learn, right? So we’re most researchers, if you go and Google focus group, right, there’s tons of stuff out there about setting up focus groups.
And they’re talking about the research style, right? [00:09:00] Marketing style. So You’re going to get a lot of information on that. Most of the time, though, it’s all the same. Use plain language, uh, be neutral, use open ended questions, right? And that’s because the whole purpose is to learn, learn everything there is to learn, right?
And then get behind that, figure out what’s backing up all those things. So two very different mindsets. And what happens is sometimes if we go into a focus group, And we don’t really even realize we’ve got this lawyer mindset going, right? We’re going to try and win, even though we know, oh, I can’t reveal my bias.
We do really very subtle things. And it could be just be things like saying my clients or my case, or a lot of times what I see is people will get. They’ll get argumentative, right? If you have a participant who has an opposite point of view to what you want to win the case, there can get a little, little argumentative, also kind of confrontational.
And this kind of comes in where, [00:10:00] you know, in doing a deposition, one of the best questions you can ask defendant or the corporate rep or you guys, why, why, why, why best one word question, right? That is not great for focus groups. And you may be thinking, well, how come? Well, a lot of this has to do with thinking about our size of our groups here.
You may like them small. I know lawyers who like six people in there. Nothing wrong with that. I know people who want 14 people in there. Nothing wrong with that. However, you now have small group dynamics, even if you are on zoom, asking people why it is a confrontational question, right? It also asks people, our brains actually go to a different side, right?
Instead of sticking with our thought, we can go over to kind of getting into it. Whoa, okay, now I’ve got to actually analyze it and give a little different response. So we really want people to keep in that train of mind, and a lot of, a lot of people talk about this, this is not anything new, asking, well, tell me more about, instead [00:11:00] of asking why.
The other thing that I see sometimes is people. And again, we do it as lawyers, agree, disagree, right? And the way that it works out in this small group dynamics of a focus group, someone will give an opinion. Oh, the light was green. Or, oh, it’s the purple. And then the follow up is, who disagrees? Now you’re asking, you’re pitting them against each other.
In a small group, it’s very, very difficult. As strangers, it’s really hard to get people to do that. Now, we may do that in jury where we’ve got 40 people. Sometimes we even have to manage 60 people or more, right? That’s a good way to cull the whole audience, right? People like, you know, somebody in the front rows, you know, disagreeing with the person in the back row, they can’t even see each other, right?
It’s very much more anonymous versus here, it’s very different. Confrontation is very different and what ends up happening is when you kind of start to create this a little more confrontational moment. It’s very hard for people to feel like [00:12:00] they can actually give honest opinions. And a lot of times people will start to reduce their participation now.
This also lets other people who have a big personality to take over the group. Now at this point, now we’re not really getting all the information that we need from these folks. We’re kind of now stifling our group. We’re stifling to get that information. And here’s the thing. These are very subtle things that can happen, but basically it’s just a little bit of an unnerving thing in us.
It’s like, Oh, kind of our gut telling us like, Hmm, this doesn’t really feel safe to share anymore. Or If the person, the lawyer reveals their bias, even on accident, like it’s still going to end up coloring the group. Some people will want to support and, and go with you, whether they like you or not, they agree with the position or not just because you’re the one paying them.
So a lot of really kind of subtle things that can happen. We’re just walking in being our lawyer minds, right? That’s, [00:13:00] you know, what we’ve been trained to do for years. So But if we flip it around and we think about going into a focus group with our research mindset, our learning mindset, right? We’re going to work really hard to be neutral.
We’re going to set up open ended questions. We’re going to get questions that maybe scaling questions, right? And we’re going to set up that agree, disagree differently. Now, a lot of times people say, well, I like that question. Let me very subtle, but very different. It’s easy for the moderator say, who agrees with this statement or who disagrees with this statement?
Then I give a statement. Uber driver was distracted and therefore is responsible. Who agrees with that? Who disagrees with that? I’m the one who’s standing in the center asking questions, but I’m asking both sides. And I’m not trying to pit each other against one another. Maybe I’m pitting them against me, and that’s okay as a moderator.
But again, I’m keeping it neutral. Like, do you agree or disagree? Right? Versus saying, okay, Susie, [00:14:00] you said purple. You know, Johnny, you said brown. Who’s right? You know, okay, now we’re just kind of like who disagrees, who agrees, you’re rarely going to get a lot of participation out of those style of questions, which is another reason not to use them, use them.
But there’s other ways to ask questions again, to keep it open, keep it neutral, but still gauge people’s, Is it yes or no? That’s also thinking it’s always black and white, right? That’s why I love a scaling question to give people options and then be able to ask them about their scale. Going back to our research mindset here, where instead of asking why we’re going to say, tell me more.
And what you’re going to find is you’re going to have a much more open discussion. You’re going to hear people disagree with one another in a very polite way. But they’re going to do it right. Even though it’s a small group dynamic, but also what you’re really going to be able to get is people are going to feel safe giving you that deeper explanation, whatever they’re, maybe it’s an inner bias.
They’re going to [00:15:00] feel safe enough to give when you do that follow up to give you more than that initial first blush, yes or no. You know, I’m a six out of 10 and they won’t do that if they feel like it’s confrontational or argumentative or, you know, like, Oh, this doesn’t feel safe, but having that open.
Oh yes, of course. Tell me being neutral. Yes. Tell me this. Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead. Thanking everybody. Right. And I know that’s a whole thing about moderating. that we could talk about for a whole nother session. But I always just tell people if you’re new to moderating, like just the key is open ended questions, asking everyone the open ended questions, right?
And then not following up. I think that’s probably one of the other things too, that happens when we think about a very different between a lawyer mindset and a focus group researcher mindset is kind of sometimes the follow up. We have a tendency to. Oh, yeah. Oh, I agree with that, too. Right now. You just imputed your bias, right?
Versus somebody else in the group who maybe hasn’t given their opinion yet, and they know. Oh, [00:16:00] no, I’m disagreeing with you. Okay. Maybe I’ll just agree just to go along to get along, right? Get over with this focus group versus, you know, a very open opinion. Yeah. Neutral researcher mindset would just say, okay, and next and next and next because your job is to direct traffic, right?
You’re just making sure everybody’s getting their opinions in there. You’re getting here from everybody, right? You’re not actually right trying to tell people where to go Right, that’s kind of the difference between like, oh, no, no, we’re not gonna listen to that anymore. We’re gonna go over here But I’m going to say thank you so much for that.
And then I’m not going to say thank you over here, right? So that also cues people in very subtle, small things that can happen. So obviously the encouragement from this episode is to shift your mindset when you are moving into doing a focus be very aware that’s half the battle. Sometimes it’s just looking at what we’re going to do and being aware of, Oh, that actually is showing my bias.
That’s showing my preference. If I say it that way. And if [00:17:00] you do, right, the whole goal of focus groups is to get new information, get out of your point of view, find other points of view that you can’t get on your own. Go try and ask them a lawyer. Guess what? They got the same mindset as you, right? Oh, well, I’ll just go ask my family.
No, wrong. They’re just biased, right? Because they depend on you, right? I’ll just go ask the church group. Now, again, they know you, right? We need some strangers, some non lawyer people to ask and get information out of to build your case for the jury, right? We got to get out of our, out of our way. And listen.
So that’s always the goal with our focus groups and so I’ve made a little checklist for you and don’t worry this is going to be in the show notes if you are driving or working out or walking down the street listening to this. These are going to be in the show notes and I’ve divided it up into kind of a presentation slash planning and then moderating.
Now, I will [00:18:00] say from one of the best things you can do is write everything out. Write out everything you’re going to say, write out all your questions. Now, I know you’re thinking, gosh, that is so tedious. That’s not how I do anything in my practice, Elizabeth. I understand, but what we’re doing in this focus group is so very specific and it’s just so easy to tee off right and reveal your bias if we don’t really pay Attention and be really aware of it.
Now, as you keep doing them, it’s going to be second nature to you. All right. So, okay. Well, hold on. If I say it that way, that’s actually going to reveal a bias or that’s actually giving a little pretext. Okay. So, that’s the best thing I can say is be able to write it out, leave it, come back, look at it, be able to say, Oh, okay.
That’s a lot of legalese, but we’re just looking at our checklist and thinking about so let’s talk about our planning and our presentation checklist, right? So we’re putting together a presentation and maybe you’re going to write it all out. Maybe you’re just going [00:19:00] to do a really heavy outline. It’s also a really great way to do it.
And so here are five things on my checklist that I would say, Hey, have this checklist out to look at your presentation. When you’re thinking about planning your presentation or the case you’re going to do, you know, put this checklist there. And number one is remove legalese. There is always another way to say negligence, to say malpractice.
There’s always another way. We are in a focus group. We’re not in a courtroom. Okay. When you put in legalese, it’s confusing to people. Some people won’t even ask you what it means. They’ll just make assumptions. Or what I see sometimes is we spend so much extra time explaining the legalese when we could have just used that language to begin with.
Okay. So think about that legalese. Think about that plaintiff defendant. They may not know what the word plaintiff is, but they do know the word defendant. So again, we’re already charging things up a little bit for confrontation wise, so easy ways to remove those. Think of other ways to say it, [00:20:00] right? So number one, remove legalese.
Number two, you want to give context, not pretext. Okay, so let me give an example of this. Let’s talk about a car wreck because that’s generally pretty easy. Generally, we always all have one, but this works for almost any kind of case you may have. So context is in a car wreck cases. The weather is clear.
We are on Burnet and Jones Road. There’s two lanes on Burnet. There’s four lanes on Jones. At this intersection, there is a three light traffic signal. I’m just giving context. Pretext is, this is a presentation about a car crash. This is a presentation about a surgery gone wrong. Now, I’ve just, I’m pre, I’ve put you, wherever your mind goes.
I’ve gone ahead and planted you there, right? Versus giving context. So always be thinking about when we’re putting out our presentation, am I already setting people on a direction by what I’m saying? Or do I just need to give context, right? And sometimes we give context to remove [00:21:00] questions later down the road.
Always be thinking about, am I doing one versus the other? Maybe I just need to give context. If you can’t, you find that like, I just, I don’t know how to do that, Elizabeth. Just Line through that sentence all together. Just don’t say it, right? Just don’t say it. Because if you can’t think of a way around it, then maybe you just don’t need to say it.
And what happens is, this is one tip I would say is, for me, when I am putting together a presentation or I’m thinking about how do I say this, I love to create my outline and walk away from it, come back the next day and look at it. Because what’ll happen is I’ll be like, Oh, you’re not going to know what bad faith is.
Well, here’s the other way to say this. So I love putting things down and coming back to them. Even for a day will help your brain be able to refresh and look at it. Checklist for the presentation number three is the way to remain neutral is to have both sides. And it’s again, it could be, this is the point of view of the red car.
This is the point of view of the blue car. [00:22:00] This is the point of view of the doctor. This is the point of view of the patient. neutral language that goes along with this in our checklist here that we’re using neutral language. We’re not jazzing up our language. And if you’re not sure what that means, right, this is when we say, you know, crashed into versus, you know, four force flew right into the side of that car, getting a little bit excited about that.
Right. Our fourth checklist is just going through and removing very language that’s subtle, my case, removing those words altogether, your logo. A lot of people have kind of a sample PowerPoint that always has their logo on it. Take that out of there. The caption. Some people always want to put the caption in their presentation.
People don’t know what that is. So it’s one, it just starts off on a confusing, and it’s also a little bit of pretext too. So just remove it. People don’t know what it is. You’re not, you’re just basically starting off on a confusing point. And our last one would be thinking again about looking at our presentation [00:23:00] and if you’ve outlined it, you’ve created a PowerPoint, going back through and looking at it and saying, am I repeating myself?
And lawyers are really notorious. If there’s a point that they really, really love, they say it multiple times. I understand. You’re right. An opening statement. You’re going to go in the courtroom. You’re going to get a closing statement. You’re going to want to repeat yourself. The rule of threes. That’s great.
But we’re in a focus group. So we don’t need to do that. We really want to make sure that we’re not repeating ourselves too many times on the same point. Okay. So that’s our checklist for presentation. Let’s talk about our moderating checklist. And again, we’ve got five things on this checklist. Thank you.
Number one, most important to make sure we are staying in our research mindset is open ended question. Who, what, when, where, how come? Those are easy questions, right? People can take them anywhere they want and that’s what we want. We just want to make sure we get on those, get what’s in their brains.
Number two, ask everyone the big questions, right? So I typically have, here are three issues that [00:24:00] we need to make sure and ask questions about. So, I got to get everyone on that question. What can happen is sometimes we get stuck and we ask one or two people and then we end up following up and we don’t finish the round with everybody.
Well, that’s a very easy way to expose bias is because you’re only listening to people that you like and you’re skipping everybody else. So that’s a really easy one. Ask everyone the big questions before you follow up. That’s right. Ask everyone the big question before you go back and follow up. Super easy to do.
Super easy to forget to do. Number three, it’s always, tell me more, not why, just write, tell me more, just, you know, write it on your sheet in front of you, tell me more, right, instead of why. And it’s just a very easy, subtle thing, use this in choice selection, lots of people would agree with me, right, tell me more.
Number four, this one again is huge for a research mindset, [00:25:00] is don’t give more facts. Number Lawyers love to do that. They love it. Focus groups are always going to ask more questions, right? They’re inquisitive people. They want to know more. We don’t give them more. Why? Because give them what you gave them.
You want to get what they think about this information just as it lies. If it was important enough for you, you should have put it in the main one. But a lot of times what people want to do is they want to dribble facts out. Well, I want to see how this influences them. Well, no, that is influencing them.
Let me withhold this fact and then tell you, right? Couple things happen. Number one, people start to realize you’re withholding information. So they start to withhold their information. Oh, you’ve got more. Number two, people start to say, well, it depends. Well, it depends. You have more. It depends. Now, does that, it depends help you with any?
No, that doesn’t help you with your case at all. And then number three, people, most of the time when they do it, everyone asks about speed. So the speed of the cars was 35. [00:26:00] You know, why is that important to you? Now I’ve asked why, and now I’ve just implied that it’s important to you. So it just gets us in a hairy, hairy mess.
So if you’re starting out or even you’ve been this whole dribbling facts out, right? It’s not great. Even if you put it in a question. So what would you think if the police officer gave this car ticket? Okay, so they already know. What else do you have? So if it’s important, put it in the presentation. Also, if that comes into evidence, put it in the presentation.
Okay, so anyhow, If you’re just starting out or you’ve been maybe doing this for a little while and you’re getting stumped in the discussion, that’s a very, very good reason why the faucet turns off of information and you get this. Well, it depends. Well, it depends. Or you just get people who just don’t talk anymore.
So that could be a big one. So put facts in your presentation and then hold your guns. Great. That’s information you’d like to know. Okay. Tell me how that would help you or not. So now I’m following [00:27:00] up. I’m getting what you want. Some people say, Oh, I just wanted to know, right? Versus you may think an opal.
You don’t know. So that’s the followup to getting a question about, Oh, well, I want to know if the doctor said this to the patient. Okay. Well, tell me a little bit more about that. You know, tell me how, like, how is that fitting in? Again, I’m just trying to get more information about how. All right, last one, moderating mindset number five is don’t pit your participants against one another.
We talked about this earlier, trying to pit people against one another takes a very, very skilled moderator to do that. And also just generally just don’t do it. If you want to pit people against one another, pit them against you, right? Play devil’s advocate, put them against you and make them take the opposite side, right?
I’m going to take the opposite side or of what they think. So you want to pit somebody against another person, pit them against you as the moderator, right? Okay. This episode was a little bit longer, but I appreciate you guys hanging in there. And don’t forget the checklist for presentation, planning, and for moderating to keep our research mindset will be in the show notes [00:28:00] for you.
Ultimately. Y’all, the goal is always to get more information to build a better case for the jury. That is what we’re doing here. We don’t want to stifle getting that information in our focus groups. We work so hard to put them together to get these people here. We take our time present and create. We really want you to get that feedback and learn from your cases instead of getting that one set of feedback.
So that’s what this episode was about. I hope that you enjoyed it. If you did, please like review on your favorite podcast platform. That way more people can find it, follow it so you can download the new episodes when they come in. Also, just so that you know, please join the email list. There’ll also be a link in the show notes.
There are other new things that I release checklist downloads, even some new courses that are coming out about helping lawyers create their own focus groups, run focus groups better to learn more. So. Join that email list. The link is in the show notes and [00:29:00] until next time, thank you.