The Easiest Place to Start if You are New to Virtual Jury Research [Ep 124]
In this podcast episode, host Elizabeth Larrick provides guidance for individuals new to virtual jury research, focusing on starting with opening statement focus groups. Drawing on her experience working with lawyers and conducting virtual focus groups, Elizabeth explains how running a 20-30 minute opening statement session can simplify trial preparation and produce valuable feedback. She highlights the benefits of using virtual focus groups to understand case themes, address specific legal challenges, and improve trial outcomes, citing a $44 million verdict and a $22 million verdict as examples. Elizabeth encourages listeners to join her email list to access an upcoming on-demand course for virtual focus groups.
00:00 Introduction to Virtual Jury Research
01:44 Defining Virtual Jury Research
03:03 Starting with the Opening Statement
04:36 Benefits of Using Opening Statements
06:40 Gathering Feedback and Adjusting
09:53 Real-World Success Stories
12:38 Conclusion and Next Steps
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Episode Credits
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Episode Transcript
Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. I’m your host, Elizabeth Larrick, and I’m glad you’re joining me today. This episode is going to be for folks who are new to doing virtual jury research, or maybe you’ve tried it out once or twice and you’re kind of unsure of what would be the next step in growing your virtual jury research knowledge.
And so today’s episode is about the easiest place to start if you’re new to virtual jury research. And I wanted to provide this episode because working with lawyers, running my own virtual jury research, I have found sometimes the biggest hurdle is knowing where I can start that’s easy and simple. And so in watching folks do focus groups and helping people run focus groups and mock juries, The easiest place we can start is a place that we know, which is the opening statement.
And I want to take just a quick moment here to clarify, what do I mean when I say virtual jury research? And There are so many options available now online and what I am talking about is when you put together a kind of small group of 8 to 10 to 12 individuals to come together on Zoom or whatever online platform you are using for a few hours.
Maybe it’s 1, 2, 3 hours, maybe it’s even 4 hours. And you’re going to moderate that group yourself, or maybe have somebody else moderate it in your office. And you’re going to really ask questions and get what I would consider qualitative, right? A lot more understanding what’s in their brains about their responses versus what could be compared to data surveys, where there’s going to be hundreds of folks who look at the evidence.
Maybe they listen to something and then they give feedback and you end up getting kind of a large data report. So this is the virtual jury research, which I normally talk about as focus groups, where again, we’re taking a smaller group of people and we’re really talking to them about their thoughts and kind of watching them discuss and deliberate in front of us with guidance through moderation.
And I believe that the solution to getting started if you’ve not done a virtual focus group is to run an opening statement. of 20 to 30 minutes. And again, let me just make sure that we’re coming in on the right and thing, which is most of the time when we come to a virtual focus group or coming to virtual jury research, we are stuck.
We’re having a problem in the case. Maybe we’ve got some challenging liability. We’ve got a, he said, she said, and The opposing counsel is being very obstinate about their point of view and their facts, right? So there’s kind of an impasse. Maybe there’s hard to value damages where it’s a unique set of damages, or maybe there’s some pre existing that makes it a little challenging for causation.
And of course, sometimes we have the other bucket that we hear sometimes about witness credibility and, you know, how is this. Person going to come off to a jury. And so why I believe that an opening statement helps you do this would be that you would create an opening statement that’s around this particular problem, right?
So it’s 20 to 30 minutes. We’re not going to run the whole enchilada here. We’re just going to do maybe the one taco plane. Okay. And that just means we’re going to tackle one issue. Maybe it’s just liability. And this is a very familiar. Virtual focus group that we run and I suggest to people who are new to coming to my focus groups and they’re going to do, you know, their own material.
And the number one reason why is we know how to do this, right? We’re lawyers. We’ve been talking about opening statements. Even if you’ve never done a trial, which is not unusual, by the way, you’re not alone in that camp. Like there’s a lot of talk. There are a lot of books. There’s a lot of guidance.
There’s a lot of examples that you can find. And so this is something that it’s not Something we have to go create that may be difficult for us. For example, when a lawyer tries to put together a neutral narrative, it can be challenging because we are invested. We feel very strongly about our side of the case, so being neutral and creating this neutral narrative can be difficult.
Also other things like cutting deposition clips and just creating a presentation that way, or even visuals, timelines, things that are not necessarily directly in our wheelhouse as lawyers, litigating lawyers. And so that’s why start where we know, which is writing an opening statement. And the other main reason why this is an easy place to start is because we have to do this really no matter what.
we are or where we are for trial preparation, we’re going to have to do an opening statement. And this step of sitting down and making yourself do a 20 to 30 minute opening statement on something very specific. Like I said, liability. Maybe it’s causation really makes you organize your thoughts, put it down, pen to paper.
We talk about that a lot, how important it is to, even at the first pass to write it out because it really gets things on the paper, out of your brain. And then you can really look at cutting things out. Remember 20, 30 minutes really makes us regulate how much information we can give, but also you’re going to put things in your case themes.
You’re going to organize that evidence in the way that you feel strongest about it, which is a great task to do. But also again, that then leads us to our third reason to do an opening statement as your place to start with a virtual focus group. Because it is so easy to understand the feedback, right?
You’re going to get uncomplicated, straightforward feedback about your case, your problem, and your award winning statement. Your case themes, like your evidence, if you think that’s the strongest, right? And so you’re really able to make this process easy on yourself by using the chat, right? So when we run an opening statement virtual focus group, the first 20 to 30 minutes of Is the opening statement and then the group answers very simple questions, like yes, no questions in the chat.
And then you begin the discussion where you just have a very open question. What do you think? And you get everybody’s feedback. And then of course the ponies are out of the gate at this point, right? And they’re all influencing self and it’s easy then to continue to ask questions though about what was confusing.
We heard a piece about how this person said it was a red light, but the other person said it was a green light. What do you all think? Or we heard that the main person who was injured was a passenger and they weren’t paying attention to what was right. Is that a problem? Okay, so there’s lots of easy ways to ask direct questions about your problems and get that feedback.
And of course, you know, the main question that we normally always have as lawyers is what am I missing? Where are the blind spots and what facts do you want to hear or know about that would help you make a decision? And so again, really simple set up one. We know, right? We write opening statements. We’re already organizing things in our brain about where we think the strongest themes are strongest claims and our evidence.
And then this just makes us put pen to paper and really organize it and again make the cut here. We’re going to have lots of information more than that fits in 30 minutes. Making you sit down and squeeze it into that 20 30 minutes really makes you analyze what is the best. and how to sequence it. And then of course, we want to start in a easy place that we can understand what feedback we’re getting.
It’s uncomplicated. Okay. And that’s why I love suggesting that lawyers who are new or lawyers who have maybe tried virtual focus groups and they want to take it to the next step, or they’re not really unsure what would be the next focus group to do an opening statement focus group, virtual focus group.
Um, is an excellent place to get started and feel successful. And that’s the thing too, is doing an opening statement leans into where we naturally are in a case. It leans into our advocacy. It’s okay to be an advocate in this situation. And of course, the flip on that is just make sure that a different person is asking questions, right?
Especially You know, it’s very hard to kind of flip faces in a focus group where you’re being a total advocate and then you flip to try to be neutral and ask questions. Just have somebody else come in and ask the questions. And again, you could write the questions out for your staff to basically just ask the questions and nothing else.
And still you’d be able to get that easy feedback. Understand, you know, did my theme hit or did not hit? Was this the best evidence or do they want to see something else? And, you know, the two main examples that I have are, you know, in the very beginning of the pandemic had a case here in Austin that was going to be one of the first virtual and so got together and really looked at, you know, How can we make this complicated case about a fiduciary duty simple?
And so they were very streamlined. The lawyers wanted to do just opening statements and we did three virtual focus groups just with opening statements. And by the time the case got to trial, they were actually able to do in person. However, they felt really strongly, very comfortable, very confident that their opening statement was basically going to nail the case down clearly.
Quickly and simply, and there’s no way that the defense would ever be able to come back. I think that’s absolutely true. They end up getting a 44 million dollar verdict in that case. And additionally, recently, and this will be upcoming on the podcast soon, my guest spot with Michelle Gessner talking about her case against Wells Fargo, where she again used virtual focus groups.
And using her opening statement, many, you know, over and over again, at least I think four or five times. Again, just tweaking it. And again, that’s another follow up with an easy, the next easiest one to do is to tweak that opening and come back, but her redoing her opening statement, uh, many times, and she talks about this in our episode together about how it really helped her one, understand her fame and her evidence, but allowed her to pivot.
Because she had done it so many times, she knew where the jury was, but she was able to pivot if she’d gotten objections, which of course she did in her opening statement. Uh, but that case turned out in a 22 million verdict. So, you know, the proof is in the pudding. This is the easiest one, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not going to get the best outcomes.
You are going to get simple, understandable feedback here. So, Here is the theme, which is it doesn’t have to be complicated. We tend to overcomplicate things as lawyers, but I really, you know, the strive in this focus group to make. I strive in this podcast to make it easy and simple to encourage you to start using virtual focus groups.
You think about this as jury research to help you make decisions in your case, get the feedback that’s clear and understandable to really help and ease your trial preparation burden earlier than that 30 day mark before and get some significant help so you can sleep better at night. Right. And that’s where this opening statement focus group comes in to really get your brain to organize everything, put it on paper, and then be able to feel confident in moving forward.
So I hope that this easy place to start our opening statement virtual focus groups will help you get started if you haven’t, or give you an idea for your next virtual focus group in a case that may be stumping you. All right. Thank you again so much for tuning in. I want to encourage everybody who is listening to join the email list.
The link will be in the show notes and specifically because right now I am going to be launching my on demand course for do it yourself virtual focus group, but I’m only launching it to my email list. And because I love my email list and my loyal I’m Folks over there, there’s going to be a bonus that is just going to be exclusive to the email list.
So check the show notes. It is www. larricklawfirm. com slash connect. If you are not able to check those show notes, get signed up and then you will learn very shortly about what is happening with that on demand course. All right. Thank you so much.