What Focus Groups Taught Me about Communication
After ten years of focus groups, I take a look back at what focus groups taught me about communication. This episode passes on a few of the major teaching points and likely reinforces things you already knew to be true. Riding on the wave of our experiences, we delve into the importance of understanding the unsaid and the challenges in extrapolating data from a focus group to an entire case.
Imagine if you could simplify legal jargon into a persuasive story that hooks your focus group. That’s exactly what we’re going to demystify in this episode. Learn how to tell your client’s story in a compelling manner that cuts through the noise of legalese and reaches the hearts of your audience. We also underline the importance of tuning into what isn’t being said. Plus, we share our tips on how to champion your clients’ cause using the power of persuasive language. To wrap it all up, we’ll be discussing the significance of closely listening to the unsaid in focus groups. This is a not-to-be-missed episode for anyone looking to elevate their legal practice!
In this episode, you will hear:
- How to improve communication through focus groups
- Ways for effective communication and simplifying legal terminology
- Paying close attention to what is not said in focus groups
- How to use persuasive language to advocate for our clients
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. I’m your host, Elizabeth Larrick, and this is Trial Lawyer Prep.
I want to have an episode that piggybacks off. The interview that I just had with my good friend, Andrew. We had a pretty long interview, a [00:01:00] little bit longer than normal, about focus groups and narrative versus adversarial. But while we were chitchatting, one of the things that came up was, man, we learned so much good things from focus groups, but they also really teach us how to listen to bad news.
So I want to take a few other things that I have learned from doing focus groups, specifically about communication, and talk about those with you here today. Now, not everybody run focus groups, and that’s totally okay. As you know, I really want to help folks out there who are nervous, who are thinking about it, how to do it on their own, how to get out there and try it.
Because we learn so many wonderful things about our cases. We learn so many bad things about our cases, but all these things that are going to make us grow and develop. a better case overall. What we’re talking [00:02:00] about today are the things that I have learned in doing focus groups for over 10 years about communication.
And these are things that I think we could use right now in our practice in many different areas. And some of these things are skills, and some of them are just like, Hey, don’t do that anymore. So let’s get started. First about this topic that Andrew and I tossed around and I’ve talked about it with other folks as well But I think I really delved into focus groups Teaching you how to be a better listener of bad news right focus groups Let’s get real, they generally trash your case, right?
And that’s a little bit of the purpose. If you go in with the mindset, I’m going to win this focus group. All these people are going to be completely convinced that my case is a better case. Okay, that’s really not the purpose of a focus group. So just stop what you’re doing, go back, read some transcripts and see if you’re actually trying to put your [00:03:00] finger on the balance.
But typically focus groups are kind of a gut punch. You’ve got to look at all this stuff they tell you that’s bad and go back. In listening over the years to all the bad stuff, you develop a little bit of a, okay, how do I deal with this? One, because as a moderator, you’re facing all these folks and you can’t necessarily have the reaction that you would want sitting on the focus group.
It’s again, moderators are supposed to be neutral, right? So you really learn how to get a fantastic poker face, which is helpful in other areas. I think a lot of people already develop that in depositions, having this poker face. But this really helps because you have to overcome, most of the time in deposition, you just keep marching.
Here’s, here, answer this question, answer this question. But in a focus group, you have to keep engaging and you have to keep, Oh, what about this? And being neutral. And that helps you not run away, right? That elevated pressure, it allows you then to really turn and be able to go deeper into and ask more information [00:04:00] about that bad stuff.
And then, once you learn a little more, you don’t have to take it down all the five steps of why. Right? You have to keep going, why, why. Sometimes it just takes one little extra question to get more information about maybe an experience they had, or the story about a family member, or maybe it’s, hey, they learned this from a movie, or this TV show.
All those things come up in focus groups, by the way. But once you kind of learn the backstop, right, what’s behind that. Negative news about your case. Then you can really figure out, okay, do I need to go round this? Can I go over it? Can I go under it? Do I need to just to drop it? How important is this whole thing and that’s really helpful.
And specifically I had a recent focus group where this happened, where I’m helping out a friend and I’m running this. Cause he’s obviously very deeply involved in the case and it’s a medical timeline about a client that has medical care. And of [00:05:00] course, Stuff’s missed. And there’s several providers involved.
And in true lawyer fashion, we want to get everybody on the hook if it’s there, if it’s possible. And again, this guy’s done his due diligence. If you’re thinking like, geez, you’re supposed to get an expert, you’re supposed to look at the law. You did all those things, right, but if you run any focus group or listen to any focus groups or focus talk, like there’s a whole other underlying thing, like jurors will do whatever they want.
I’m sure you’ve experienced that. Even if the law says, Hey, you got to give a dollar for pain and suffering, not going to do it. Not going to follow the law. Here’s what I think should happen here. Right. Jurors do it all the time. Focus groups do it all the time. So that’s why you want to bring it to focus group C.
Okay, can we get there on all these other providers? And surefire, no, we didn’t, right? He ran right up against the same issue that we had, that he’d run before with his own focus group. But what I tried to do was understand a little bit more, right? [00:06:00] Just to pause and ask a next question, and then ask maybe another question, and then Get other folks engaged and try to have, like, where’s this kind of coming from?
And in doing that, we really discovered people have no idea about this particular type of medical care. No one had personal experience. No one even had family members or friends, like, nothing to draw on on knowledge. So they’re relying on kind of what they know. And that’s what we learned. What is it that they’re comparing this to?
The referral system, right? So many of us get stuck up in this, Oh, you got to go back to this person, you got to get the referral, and then what’s this referral’s part, and then you go this, this. So we have lots of experience with the referral system. And so that’s what they were drawing on. And so what we did was once we finished the focus group, talked about, okay, here’s what we heard, but here’s what I think is the why.
This other layer that’s missing for them that maybe it’ll get them there. But the nice thing was we looked at that. Do you have facts of this? Oh yeah, here are this, that, this, that, this, this. So you [00:07:00] rearrange things and take another run at it. It was helpful to stop, hear the bad news, but then to take it another step forward to really figure out.
And then work with what we had, sometimes you got to drop it, like I said. So that’s always a very helpful skill to use in jury selection. Find those folks out. I think it significantly helps when you’re facing mediators who are looking at you like your case stinks. Your bills, they’re only X amount of dollars, three times medical is what you should be getting.
And it’s, sometimes it’s very difficult in that moment to not say, you can leave this room now and continue working with this person. And I also think it helps with judges as well, because you’re going to get pushed back. You’re going to know that the law’s on your side. That’s our job sometimes is to make that judge give us the right answer.
Right? So you can understand better. And there’s ways to do it in a good way and a bad way. And trust me, I’ve seen both ways in the courtroom on how to do that. But what I love about [00:08:00] focus groups is where I’m gathering this is because I’ve been doing focus groups for 10 years. I’ve done trials in that 10 years, but there are lawyers out there and maybe folks listening in here, which, hello, who have.
30 years experience, 40 years experience. And they’ve got hundreds and hundreds of trials under their belt because that’s the way the system used to be. It’s significantly changed, and talked about here on the podcast, like 2 percent of cases are going to trial. So, difficult to get that experience in there, courtroom experience, of this whole idea.
But focus groups have helped me, I would say, and I would urge other people too, that this helps develop the skill if you can’t necessarily get in the courtroom to practice, get on your feet, and learn to listen to bad news. So, a couple of things very quickly that also I’ve learned from focus groups about communication, which would be confusion kills.
And what I love [00:09:00] about focus groups is, I’ve heard this before, this was not new to me, but I didn’t understand it or really be able to see it in practice until focus group after focus group, getting these puzzled looks. It’s even just people outright saying, I’m just confused now. I’m not even sure what’s up from down.
Or the typical, a lot of times I get, I have some questions, can you go back? It’s too many facts frustrates the brain. It’s overload and overwhelm. We’re taking folks who have no context whatsoever, whether it be the jury, whether it be the A mediator who hasn’t read anything you sent them, whether it be a focus group, and we have to teach them in a very short amount of time, the context.
And so many times we just give way too much context, way too many facts. And that brain [00:10:00] is just, whoa, trying to juggle all these things and decipher what’s important and what’s not. And generally what happens is people just throw up their hands. Just say, gosh, I don’t know. What about this? So their brain just comes up with another question.
I can’t answer your question, but here’s another one, right? Go away, person asking me questions. Always thinking about ways to simplify. What is important and what is not important in the sense of confusion. And also this is helpful to be able to see. We know when the defense does this to us because. Wow, they’re just smearing everything around, and you know that works really well.
Again, hello, our brains get frustrated, and we just stop working. Ugh, just, I give up. No, never mind. Always important to be looking at, are we making things more confusing than it needs to be? Are we facting it up? Another thing that I see so often is using legal jargon when we don’t. We all know in communication, words [00:11:00] matter.
We can use persuasive words. We can use positive words, negative words, right? But let’s just look at legal jargon. I see this so many times where people come in and they’ll say, the plaintiff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the defendant and surefire, you know, the first round of questions, somebody’s what’s a plaintiff?
Who is that? Who was it? So was that the person driving the red car? I’m just like, Oh boy. They got stuck. You’re going along telling them something, and that word, it’s zero context clues, by the way. No one can figure this out without context. And generally, when we start talking about defendant, people think it’s criminal.
Because that’s, okay, I’ve heard that word before, you know, law and order, defendant, okay. Movies, right, we talk a little bit more about defendants than we ever do about plaintiffs. Because that word is, people don’t know. So, other part about this is, especially when it comes to using the word plaintiff, it completely removes any personal component.
It just [00:12:00] sucks any kind of personal component out the room, out the door. It’s very rigid, plaintiff, and that’s not really what we want. Right? We want to advocate for our clients. Hey, I represent Sue Jones. Even when we’re talking in the courtroom with the jury, we should really be thinking about we represent this person, that word plaintiff, that’s the legal word for this, the person who brings the lawsuit, and it really significantly removes that personal component.
So you’ll hear defense counsel, that’s the way they like to talk. They wanna remove anything personal from the courtroom adjusters. The same way. Just be thinking about that in general and you don’t need to use plaintiff if you’re not talking to the judge who knows 100 percent what it is. Think about dropping that or avoid some of that confusion.
Another thing focus groups taught me were to very clear on what happened. Simplify that story of what happened [00:13:00] in your case. This really goes along with our confusion kills and facting it out, but we can fact up, shoot, anything, right? But I think sometimes what happens is we add too many things to our story and that brain’s trying to figure out where’s the hook in your story?
Where’s the Jaws music? They’re trying to figure out who are the main players if you’ve got too many people involved. So getting really simple on that story and I have a very good friend who we’ve had on the podcast, Neil Anthony, who is, he is so impeccably good at this. He spends quite a bit of time figuring it out, but once he figures out, if he can get that simple story in two sentences, right, every time he is going into court, every time he’s talking to the, it’s the same two sentences, simplifying that story.
And when the judge starts saying it back, he’s, I know, okay, we’re good. So be thinking about that. I think focus groups. They’ll want to have to weed through all that, make it super simple for them that [00:14:00] that’s something they’ve said. Hey, we don’t need this. What was that for? Which brings me to one of my last things.
This is sometimes classified as a listening skill, like listening deeper to what is not being said. But, in the focus group context, in the setting where we’re getting transcripts. By the way, you should get transcripts. If you don’t want to pay, there’s so many wonderful AI tools that you can bring in to your Zoom or your Teams that will transcribe it.
It’s mechanical. It’s not perfect, but you’re going to have a transcript because what you can do then is literally go back and read, right? What did you say? What’d they say? What are they not saying? What did they just totally miss? And this happens all the time where, especially When we’re doing, like, an opening statement versus an opening statement focus group.
And the lawyers will throw some things in there, just to see, like, is it going to stick? And inevitably, they’ll be like, Oh, no one [00:15:00] said anything about the will. They must not have understood it. So we need to add more information on it. I’m like, wait a second. Did you ever start to think, maybe they just don’t care about it, maybe it is not important at all.
So maybe you just need to leave it out. Because some focus group people will come back and say, here’s the thing I don’t understand. They mentioned the will, but we never, that never came back into play. Sometimes it’s about what is not being said. That Is a hint to you that it’s not important, right? And if you’re really burning, you can go back in and ask, right?
So this happens quite a bit when we’re talking with clients, or this happens when I’m talking with clients. And I’ll ask some open ended questions, right? But I’m not hearing something that I thought would be super important to them or blah, blah. And again, sometimes it’s, Hey. Some people have said, X, Y, Z, ever thought about that?
And sometimes like, wow, I didn’t know. Well, that’s a different problem. That’s just, [00:16:00] didn’t know, I didn’t know. But some of us know, this is what’s more important to me. Oh, okay, just checking, you know. And that also happens when we’re dealing with mediation, where you give a presentation, maybe you guys have gone a couple rounds, and you’re just, you’re not hearing.
Something out of the other side that you had predicted, right? I mean, I kind of predicted that’s what they were going to do. They were hinting at it or whatever. And, but it doesn’t come back out. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s not important. It just means that you’ve got a good skill. You’re trying to listen for what is not being said.
But you can’t jump to the conclusion. It’s because they didn’t have enough facts. Ha, ha, ha. Because that’s generally what happens. Running one focus group is difficult to take one focus group and extrapolate for the whole age. That’s difficult because again, like we just talked about, one focus group, you’re really going to pare down those facts, try to remove confusion to get some really good feedback and listen to what’s not being said.
So I always say run to [00:17:00] your three and again, if you listen to the podcast at all, most of the focus groups that we talk about are focus groups. They are 30 minutes, they are an hour, they’re 45 minutes, they’re short, they’re sweet. Get it on virtual, make it even more cost effective for you, and at different times in the case, right?
We’re not running them, boom, right? One after the other. And again, that’s to be able to expand what we know, but also then be able to say, wow, so you have three focus groups, we only heard this thing once, even though we put it in all three focus groups, or we heard this thing, then we gave extra information about it.
Maybe that is important to them, right? Be able to extrapolate a little bit more when you run a few more focus groups. Again, 10 years here, over a thousand focus groups accumulated. So that’s where some of these lessons are coming from. There are many others that we could talk about. I feel like these are some of the top ones that are so helpful for practice of law right now.
And just to recap very quickly, listening to that bad [00:18:00] news and getting more information, removing that confusion because it kills. Losing the legal jargon, especially when we’re talking about plaintiffs and defendants, and keeping that in mind, too, when we’re talking even about experts. We feel like, oh, that word has so much, maybe it’s better that you just call them Dr.
Jones. Oh, doctor, oh, great. Maybe that’s a different connotation, right? So don’t always assume, kind of the old school way of like, Well, that means important to them. Well, that means paid to them, right? So keep that in mind. Simplify the story of what happened, right? Work really hard on that. Get that down, so then you can use it over and over again.
And of course, last but not least, was listen for what is not being said. Maybe it is not important. As you thought. I hope that this podcast was helpful and a little bit of a piggyback on a conversation that Andrew and I had together. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review on your favorite platform.
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