Planning a Focus Group Blueprint
Are you planning on running some focus groups in 2022? Are you wondering how to navigate the planning process? Or maybe you’ve been doing focus groups, and you’re thinking about how to do a bigger blueprint for a series of cases or get ready for trial? If you already have a case in mind, and you think it’s a great case for a focus group to figure out this problem or this issue, one of the biggest questions is when to do a focus group. In this episode, we are going to dive right in to answer these questions.
Whether you’re doing just one case or you’re planning on building a series of focus groups, it’s helpful to set out a blueprint for focus groups.
Having a blueprint helps you get things systematized so your process gets easier over time. You also get to compare data from different groups. The more data you have, the more information you have to analyze the trial. A trial can be tricky since you don’t always get to go to trial as much as you want. And so, doing focus groups will help you prepare, and ultimately, build better cases. You’re not only preparing your clients better, but you’re also preparing yourself better for depositions and crafting better questions.
In this episode, you will hear:
- When to do a focus group
- The benefits of focus groups
- How to create a focus group blueprint
- The power of doing multiple focus groups for one case
- Creating a blueprint for types of cases
- Building a series of three focus groups
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Supporting Resources:
You can learn more about when to have a focus group in this blog post: https://larricklawfirm.com/focus-group-faq-at-what-point-in-my-case-do-i-run-a-focus-group-larrick-law-firm/
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: [00:00:00] Are you going to do some focus groups in 2022? Are you wondering how to navigate planning those out? Or maybe you’ve been doing focus groups and you want to think about how to do a bigger blueprint for a series of cases or getting ready for trial. This episode, we are going to dive right in to answer those questions.
So stay tuned. Welcome to Trial Lawyer Prep. What if you could hang out with trial lawyers and jury consultants? Ask them about connecting with clients and juries more effectively. Then take strategies, tactics, and insights to increase your success. Each week, Elizabeth Larrick takes an in depth look at how to regain touch with the everyday world, understand the emotional burden of your clients and juries, and use focus groups in this process.
Elizabeth is an experienced trial lawyer, consultant, and founder of Larrick Law Firm in Austin, Texas. Her goal is to help you connect with juries and clients in order to improve your abilities in the courtroom. [00:01:00] Now, here’s Elizabeth. Hello and welcome. This is your host, Elizabeth Laird, and you’re listening to another episode of Trial Lawyer Prep.
This is a podcast designed and created for trial lawyers working with difficult cases, problematic clients, and taking those difficult and problematic cases to trial. Our goal here is to help you connect with juries and clients in order to improve your abilities in the courtroom. I am excited to welcome you into 2022.
We had a fantastic episode in my opinion, of course, about planning for the year. And we’re just going to continue that with this next two episodes with planning for focus groups and then planning for witness prep. So I’m excited to lay out a focus group blueprint today to talk about really looking at how do we create a focus group plan, right?
So maybe we’re going to start doing focus groups this year in your law office and you decide, Hey, we’re going to run three. Maybe you’re starting [00:02:00] out and you want to get a little more information about how do we plan this out? Think about it. Well, maybe we’re talking about one case. Maybe we’re talking about a series of cases that you have, or maybe you’ve been doing focus groups for a while in your office, and you’re wondering, huh, I wonder if, can we systemize this?
Can we make an approach so that we can just keep repeating this for maybe our bigger cases, or maybe a case that’s got some difficult facts for liability? Or maybe it’s just challenging all around. So that’s what we want to tackle today is thinking about how to set out a blueprint for your focus group.
And what I like to do is we’re going to kind of break this down into, okay, if we’re approaching this with just one case, and then also if we’re going to approach this with a type of case, like maybe the type being car wreck cases or the type being. The case that is going to trial, if there’s no chance of settlement.
So we’re going to take that in two parts. And again, we’re going to look at this in two ways. Let’s scheme out how to schedule this. When do it? What types of focus groups we’re talking about? And [00:03:00] maybe doing a series of those. So let’s talk about if you have one case. And maybe you’re starting out or maybe you already have a case in mind like, Oh man, this would be a great case to focus group and figure out this problem or this issue.
And one of the biggest questions I get asked is when, when should I do a focus group? And what I always like to ask people as well, we kind of look at what is it that you want to accomplish? But also sometimes you may be in the middle of a case and decide to do a focus group. Maybe you are about to file and you’ve wanted to run a focus group.
So there’s lots of different timing. It really kind of depends on your focus group purpose. So I’m going to kind of take two different approaches and the first one would be maybe you’ve never run a focus group and you have a case in your office that you’re thinking about doing it and let’s say it’s already filed in litigation.
What I always like to ask is, okay, so the case is in litigation. What I always kind of look at now is in the scheduling, do you have a trial? Have you already had mediation? Oh, do you still have ongoing discovery? [00:04:00] If you’re really just going to run this one focus group, it’s always good to make sure you have all of your facts in order.
Maybe there’s some outstanding discovery requests. Maybe there’s a deposition that’s outstanding. So you might want to get all that information in. before you run this one focus group to figure out more information about the case that you have. Other times, if you just got this one focus group that you’re going to run, you’re really looking at, okay, I really want to run it right for mediation.
It’s a great time to look at how you’re laying out the case, you know, show it to a group of people and figure out, are they going to adopt what you got? Are they going to give you something different back? So that’s always when looking at scheduling, like when, like, well, what is happening in the case? And really, what is it that we’re, what’s our purpose here?
If you’ve just got this one case and it’s in litigation, there’s really all kinds of focus group types that you can run, right? So you can run opening, maybe you’re not done with discovery, but maybe you want to figure out what is missing. So focus group can help you decide what discovery you want to [00:05:00] continue to do.
Witness credibility also is a great one where let’s say you’ve just got a bunch of people and you have all the depositions done, you’ve got the videos, just make some clips and put the story together through the witnesses and see what happens with the focus group. You can just do jury selection and practice and get ready.
And again, that’s kind of if you’re getting ready for a trial or if you’re just need to practice. Focus groups are a great case laboratory. I mean, you can learn a lot from them. But it’s also just a really great place to practice your skills presenting, talking with people. I mean, I can’t tell you my experience has been so helpful in speaking to people and patience and listening and having active listening skills.
And also kind of knowing like when almost. to stop talking with a person. That helps really with jury selection, but listening and nodding, it’s helped me tremendously. So I totally believe that focus groups are really helpful, just helping generally with speaking and trial practice and presenting. [00:06:00] So I want to talk a little bit about a case that we had here with one focus group, a friend of mine came to me and she had some pretty solid facts that were constructing a oil change.
building, right? So the building was still going up. It was pretty much well done. And there was a crew that was in there working and the woman was working and fell into the pit. And so, and it will change location. You have these pits, giant underground, 10 feet deep, persons underneath there draining the oil and everything.
So she falls in there and severely severe injury. I mean, paralyzed. And so they’re wondering, okay, well, who all would be responsible here? And the purpose for them was to figure out, do we file this case or do we not? Pretty heavy decision because, you know, you’re thinking about your resources, your time, your energy, case expenses, and yeah.
Okay. So maybe legally you can get through the hoops, but ultimately, if you get to a jury, would you [00:07:00] make it? You know, would they file it? find the person you need to be held responsible. So that’s why she came to me. So we put together this one focus group before filing litigation and found that there wasn’t going to be enough responsibility on the party with the insurance.
Yes, it’s disappointing, but also good to know and learn that don’t waste your time and energy. Because it’s just something that the jury just can’t get over. They’re not going to place enough responsibility on this other party that had the insurance policy. And so one case, one shot at it. Why just do one focus group?
And again, that might be a budget issue. Maybe you just want to do one and try it out. Maybe you’re learning to do focus groups. So it’s very low risk to do one of those things. Also kind of like we just talked about, maybe you are trying to decide whether to file a case or not. Maybe there’s some tenuous facts on fact issues or even legal issues.
You want to make sure you can get there before you file a case and put a lot of time and energy in it. So that’s always super helpful as [00:08:00] well. You can just run one and learn a ton of information if you’re getting ready for a trial, mediation, witness credibility. So let’s walk back through. If we just have one case.
Right? We want to get the most bang for our buck with this focus group. Really want to figure out one, what’s our purpose? Are we just going to issue spot? Are we going to get ready for mediation? Are we going to get ready for trial? Are we trying to do some discovery work? We’re trying to do some theme work, some trial theme work.
Once you kind of tackle that down. Then that really helps you work backwards. When do I need to do this? Do I have enough information right now? And then ultimately, knowing what my purpose is, that’s going to help me scope what kind of type of focus group that I want. If you’re running one, you can easily do a one hour.
Right? Just a one hour. One hour you can do three hours. Right? That also depends on the depth of information you want to get into. Case spotting or some really in depth themes and you want to get some good feedback based on a full three hours they’re going to [00:09:00] go through, which is helpful. In thinking about one case instead of just one focus group, let’s talk about just having one case and you maybe want to run it through and you want to make this blueprint and you’re thinking, okay, Elizabeth, I want to run this case.
Let’s blueprint this out if we had a perfect focus group blueprint in my mind and what I have done for my cases here is I always do a pre lit just a really quick issue spotting. What do they see? What are they going to give back to me on this fact pattern? Right? Snapshot really quick one. I always like to do discovery.
a little bit, but I always like to also do a discovery focus group to make sure what else would they want to know? What am I missing? If I’m going after a commercial vehicle, truck, and a company, what is it they want to know about the company? Do I have all that discovery done? And that also helps too, because most of the time I’ve done Some initial deposition.
So we know what actors are going to say. So you put that in front of them too. And then ask what their discovery to do. I’m always like to run [00:10:00] a focus group before mediation and before mediation. I’m really kind of talking about 60 days, 30 days before mediation, because I want to get a good idea in my mind about the presentation that I want.
I want to give that, put that together for them. But really leave some time to tweak it so that I can tweak my presentation for mediation and maybe if I found some good clips I can clip some things and put that also in my mediation presentation. And then if we’re taking this one case all the way through, we’re going to do an opening statement and maybe run that opening once, twice, maybe three times.
And again, when I talk about running opening statement, I’m generally just talking about doing just that opening statement, getting that feedback and getting out of there, right? Nothing else further about that case. So those are kind of a little bit smaller chunks. And then if we roll into trial, opening, jury selection, opening versus opening, mini planets opening versus defense opening, that would be a full blueprint.
Right? And that is [00:11:00] going to give you maybe six, seven focus groups. Some of these are one hour, some of these are three hours, maybe some are even six hours if we’re doing a full adversarial focus group, but we have all this data. I mean, I love having more than one focus group because we really can sit down and look at the data that we have, like how people were leaning and what worked and what didn’t work.
And it’s so helpful. The one focus group is helpful. Don’t get me wrong. It’s going to really help. Even just a little. Sometimes I hear from lawyers and I’m a true believer in this as well. If you just learn one thing, sometime that one thing can really save your case. For example, I’ve got a good friend out in Houston, his name is Nick, and they had a focus group that they put together before trial.
You know, they did kind of a full presentation, almost a mock trial set up and everything was coming along. Themes are good, but they learned that they needed to put in this one particular fact. So it was an explosion case that they had. There was some [00:12:00] gas leak in the house. I mean, the focus group was really, really honed in on, were they smokers?
Were the people who live in that house smokers? Were they smoking? And they weren’t, but that fact wasn’t in there. And so this one really, really small thing was super important to them. And it changed the case. I mean, they went to trial, of course, put that in there and it had a very good result, but I mean, they felt very, very strongly that focus group gave them that data.
And that one very, very crucial fact they needed to put in there and new focus groups will do that and you’ll see those patterns as well. Like alright cases, we always talk about making sure people wear their seat belts and other things that those are just crucial facts. Like they just need to know, for our lawyer brains, it may seem like, well of course it’s a soon, but sometimes it’s that one crucial fact that we get out of that one focus group that really can turn things around.
And those are really helpful. Um, for you. examples of doing that one case and really fine tuning on the analysis and the data. But if you have multiple focus groups for this one [00:13:00] case, man, such good data comparison, right? You can put all those people together and which way were they leaning and like, look at all that stuff.
And that’s really going to help you with jury selection, having all that data comparison as well. So let’s turn our focus now and look at creating a blueprint for types of cases. And what I mean by that is, let’s say you’ve got a docket where maybe 50 percent of what you do is car wrecks and nothing wrong with that.
Maybe 50 percent of what you do is commercial carrier cases or employment, and you want to set up a system, right? A blueprint for all of your cases to run through. Maybe you’re going to do three focus groups for every case on this docket, right? So I know that not every case maybe needs a focus group, but in this kind of, you know, Series or blueprint in my mind, I’m thinking, okay, 50 percent of my docket, I’m doing these three focus groups.
Maybe they progressively get longer. Maybe it’s, I do a one hour, then it’s two hours, then it’s [00:14:00] three hours, right? And you’re working that schedule in along the way. So again, let’s go back to our car wreck example. And you’re just going to run three focus groups for every car wreck case. So, let’s look at that.
Let’s do a pre lit. Before you file, let’s run it through. Make sure we’re getting any issues, any case holes that we’re not seeing right. Do that pre lit. Maybe for the next one we’re going to do, after discovery is all done, we’re going to run a focus group that’s much more detailed, giving a lot more information, a presentation.
Maybe we’re gearing up for mediation. Having that presentation for that and then our last focus group being before trial, right? So you’re going to scheme it out. You’re going to have those three focus groups and maybe you don’t ever make it to trial because It does end up settling. Well, okay. Then you’re not going to use that last one.
Just kind of having that system already set, like, okay, we’re going to do this before we file and then get our discovery in. And did we match up with all the problems that they [00:15:00] spotted in that one? Okay. Did they or did they not? Did it work? I don’t know. Well, let’s run a focus group, right? Let’s take all that information and run a focus group again.
See how we’re doing on that. If it doesn’t settle, then you’ve got that last focus group for trial where it’s jury selection. It’s opening. It’s. Witness credibility, just make sure everything is honing in and you’re getting ready for trial. The other way to look at it is if you know the case is going to trial.
You can set up kind of a trial focus group system, Blueprint. And one of the ones we’ve done recently was virtually we did three focus groups, all opening statements. So plaintiff opening versus defense opening and the way that they structured it is, again, this is a case that folks that came to me, they knew we’re going to trial.
This is not settling, not a chance and strong conviction in it, which is great because ultimately what they did is we had a focus group. All the focus groups were about six months. Maybe three months apart. And again, that’s because they had a [00:16:00] trial date, but you know, things got continued. They had some discovery pending, but they had a pretty good grasp on it.
And each time they ran the opening, they just tweaked things as they learned them, right? So we had first one. Okay, great. We need to find information about this. We need to tweak this in the opening. We need to create a visual aid. Great. So we came back in six months. They did all those things and okay, great, we’re hitting all the good stuff.
We’re still missing some stuff and we need to work on that visual aid. And then that last opening, right? Really close to trial where they know this is going to work and here’s our visual aid and testing all that. And they had all these three, they had this data comparison, right? So they had a really good rich pool of people to compare the data to say, what are jurors that just did not lean our way?
They just didn’t lean our way. And was it personal experience? Was it experiences that they had? Can we craft questions around that? And, Maybe just these are red flags. We just need to make red flag and talk to [00:17:00] those people in jury selection. And with the information they had and having worked so hard on that opening statement, I mean, they nailed it.
They ended up going to trial and had a fantastic result. Called me up, said, oh my gosh, yeah, this is the way to go because we were able to really Keep testing our theme. Were we hitting this theme and did we have the evidence to back it up? So they had a really good result. I’m a big proponent of doing those opening statements early because that makes you get in gear and start fashioning things and making sure you have the evidence to say at an opening and also knowing what’s not going to come in at opening but do you need to come in later?
So that’s also a super helpful blueprint is just three opening statements spread out six months in between. Another way to do it is first for jury selection that I’ve definitely done it before is three even to five focus groups at about an hour a piece, sometimes a little bit less where you’re just doing jury selection.
And you’re testing questions, [00:18:00] you’re learning the responses from people, you’re practicing that pivot. When you’re finished talking to somebody, you need to pivot to another case, you need to pivot to another question, and then also really practicing to that skill of getting people up for cause, building in those questions to make sure it feels so natural.
When you hear somebody who. Can go out for a cause and you can nail it down. Right? You got those questions. It’s not a belief that you’ve had for a while. You walked in the courthouse with that belief and you’re going to walk out of the courthouse with that same belief. Oh yeah. I mean, that’s an experience that was ingrained with you.
Oh yeah, for sure. Right? So those questions that you know, you’ve got to do them in order to secure that. Practicing those questions with focus group is very helpful, super helpful. And like I said, Dune 3. To five of those, and again, accumulating that data. I mean, one, you’re going to practice. You’re going to be so ready for the responses that you get.
You’re going to feel very comfortable. They’re going to know you’re comfortable with it. [00:19:00] It’s just going to flow more naturally when you have practice with those questions and those responses. And knowing that there’s probably that response out there, how do I get it? The response that you want to hear.
So that’s a really good one too, when you know that case is going to trial and you feel strongly that picking a jury is really going to hone in and be crucial for you. Another kind of blueprint for trial would be another three focus groups set up. Maybe just that first focus group is going to be about the jury charge.
A lot of times we have difficult jury charges. And when I say jury charge, I will call them jury questions, right? What are the questions the jury is going to answer? Put that up, put that in front of them to figure out like, what’s their initial reaction to that. Does that match up with your facts? And how do you build your case around their thoughts and expectations about those words on that page?
We did this pretty recently for an independent contractor case, an employment case, and learned all kinds of wonderful things about what people think and know about independent contractors. And even put the [00:20:00] test, you know, there’s a test in one of the jury charges that they looked at to see. Does the test make sense?
What’s confusing about this, you know, and that was so helpful for the lawyers to be like, oh, okay. So, maybe I can’t change those words on the page, maybe you go up with the judge and they’re not changing anything. That’s okay, because you still have that time in closing argument to speak to them in the way that makes sense, right?
You’ve heard it in a focus group, now you can go speak to them in your closing argument. And then follow that focus group up with, maybe it’s an opening. statement with those jury questions, right? So let’s test out your opening. Let’s test those jury questions. And then again, leading into that last focus group being an opening versus an opening with those jury questions, right?
Who’s doing better on those opening statements? As you can tell, I’m a huge proponent of doing an opening statement focus group. I just think it does so much for us. So let’s talk about why would we have Kind of these blueprints for a series of [00:21:00] cases, whether it’s that, those trial cases, maybe it’s that docket that you’ve got a car wreck cases that you just, you’ve got them sitting there.
Okay, so why are we doing a blueprint? Why are we doing more than one? And again, one things we’ve already talked about, which is data. We want to be able to compare data, different groups, more data, more information for you to analyze. A trial, You know, trial is tricky and we don’t always get to go to trial as much as we want and so doing focus groups will help you prepare.
Maybe ultimately you just want to build better cases, right? So let’s talk about, you’re going to do these series on your car wreck cases. You just want to build better cases. You want to be able to be prepared for what you know that they’re going to say. Prepare your clients better, right? Prepare yourself better for depositions and craft better questions.
That building better cases is going to get your cases more value. All right. So we’ve talked about having that one case. And [00:22:00] running through six or seven focus groups, we’ve talked about having that one focus group. And what do you want to do to get the most bang for the buck? We’ve talked about types of cases and building a series, right?
Building a series of three focus groups. Whether it be for, okay, is my car at cases? They’re going to go through this. Three focus group phase, maybe it’s for trial. Maybe you’re looking at developing a trial skill, jury selection, and those questions. Maybe you’re looking at, all right, we just got to get this case ready.
We’re just going to do a bunch of openings, make sure we’re hitting it all cylinders or doing a combination of all those things. And ultimately knowing, okay, this is what I want to do. I want to have this blueprint for these focus groups. When do I need to set that up? You know, what is the structure for that?
Is it six months apart? Is it just going to be at a triggering date when discovery ends? Or is it just, hey, this is where this case is and I just want to learn what I can [00:23:00] learn right now. And you can totally do all those things. But this episode is much more about planning that blueprint. Looking out at the landscape of what you got and deciding, okay, once we finish Discovery, we’ll want to do that.
Or, okay, once we, once we don’t make it through Medi we don’t settle the case in Mediation, Let’s move into that three focus groups for trial, or maybe it’s, Hey, I want to try this out. Let’s test it out. Let’s pick one case and do one focus group. How do we do that for the most bang for our buck? Awesome.
Well, I hope that this helped in looking at creating a focus group for trial. I do want you to know that we are definitely going to tackle how to plan for a focus group if we’re looking at, okay, Elizabeth, I’ve got my one case. How do I plan this thing? How do I presentation wise, question wise, we are totally going to do that in this podcast.
But again, we’re just starting [00:24:00] 2022. So I want to take this at like our big 30, 000 foot view. And when we come back next episode, we are going to look at planning for you for witness prep. What does the lawyer do to prepare? Right? So before we jump into working with our client, how do we get in the best mindset, best place to be able to help them do our research to make that prep go easier tune in next week for that on that episode.
But in the meantime, I would love it And I appreciate it so much if you would share this podcast with a friend, rate it, review it on your favorite podcast app, and tune in next week where we’re going to talk about planning for witness preparation. Thanks so much.