Why Trial Lawyers Use Focus Groups, It’s Not What You Think [Ep 155]
We’re going back to the basics this week, asking, “Why do trial lawyers even do focus groups?”
Focus groups are not primarily for determining case value or winning cases. Instead, focus groups provide valuable insights into jury perceptions, case weaknesses, and effective storytelling strategies.
I share some real-life examples of effective use of focus groups, including a doozy of an example that, although it was a rough go, it left the lawyer with much more clarity on the path forward, and where to concentrate their time.
In this episode, you will learn:
- How focus groups help in understanding jurors’ perspectives.
- How focus groups allow for deeper conversations.
- Why starting your opening in the right place is key.
- The hidden attitudes that can be revealed by focus groups.
- How to build a stronger case, thanks to the feedback you receive.
Elizabeth offers virtual focus groups with several options. Book a free call with the link below to find out the options for your case:
Don’t miss out on the additional free tips and strategies Elizabeth provides via email in her Trial Lawyer Prep newsletter. Sign up here:
Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick (00:00.526)
Welcome to Trial Lawyer Prep, where you learn to better connect with clients and juries, gather persuasion strategies, and how to use focus groups in the process. I’m your host, Elizabeth Lerick, and in today’s episode, we are going to talk about why do trial lawyers even do focus groups? This episode is going to take us back to the basics
but it comes from a recent focus group that I wanna share with you. Many times when lawyers come to me and they want a focus group, or when I hear lawyers talk about focus groups, they talk about finding the case value, but that’s really not what focus groups are for. Also, lawyers come to me or they’ll talk about finding the percentages of fault or responsibility. Also, not really what focus groups are for,
And also, most importantly, focus groups are not here to win. Now, there are tools to find your case value that are reliable. There are tools that you can use to find the assignment of fault on all the parties involved. There’s a tool for that. And of course, there’s a tool for you being able to stand up and try to win. But it’s not focus groups.
And this episode directly comes from a recent focus group that I had where it was a rough go. They did not like the plaintiff. They ultimately almost put over 90 % of responsibility overall on the plaintiff. But what that lawyer said, the first thing they said after that focus group was over, said, this is why I focus group. Because
This focus group alone, even though we heard pretty much all things negative, tells me number one, I’m going to trial. And so for the next four months, I know what I need to spend my time concentrating on. Also, I learned the facts that the jury will create in their own mind when they hear the story of what happened. I also learned
Elizabeth Larrick (02:21.076)
Overall, this venue, this jury poll is gonna be very unfamiliar with a lot of topics that are gonna be discussed in this triumph. So I need to learn what I need to educate my jury on very early, almost first before they actually hear the facts of what happened in the case. So those are three really huge takeaways, but they don’t have anything to do with the case value.
And they ultimately don’t have to do with the exact percentages of fault that they’re going to put on somebody. And they definitely don’t have to do with winning. So I really want to emphasize in this episode, how valuable focus groups are, even though they’re not going to give you that case number, that assignment of liability, or they’re not going to tell you, this is a total slave dunk, you’re going to win. Right? And so this,
comes down to a lot of how to do focus groups because when we run focus groups, what we’re talking about here, what gives you all these awesome things, why you’re losing the facts they’re gonna use, the facts they’re gonna create, is because these focus groups are designed to have conversations with each participant and have time for follow-up, right, to understand even deeper about where some of these comments
these ideas are coming from when it comes to each participant. Okay, so these are not deliberation style focus groups, right? These are focus groups that allow a lot of space, a lot of comfortable conversations, even though they’re uncomfortable for lawyers listening to, but they allow for a lot more space for conversations. And again, one of the key things about how to do focus groups is that you don’t want to argue or fight
or even if you see the focus group getting the facts wrong, you don’t step in and try to just reiterate. So this is actually a really big pitfall that lawyers fall into when they’re running their own focus groups. And again, I’m saying this from my own personal experience, but also having years of experience watching lawyers step into do focus groups. One of the biggest things that comes, and you don’t think that you’re being
Elizabeth Larrick (04:48.224)
argumentative or trying to persuade, but it absolutely is. So it is really common for you to give a neutral statement of the facts. And then what happens when they give you back what they heard, they invent facts or they fill in gaps or they make a lot of assumptions. That’s their analysis, right? But you try to repeat facts. And so instead of saying, okay, all right,
Tell me more about that. You say, well, wait a second. No, no, it’s the white car and then the black truck. No, and then this is what they said. No, no, the black car says, right, so you’re actually in a way arguing with them. This is a huge pitfall. And so I want to bring that to your attention if you’re running your own focus groups, but this is exactly why I offer virtual focus groups with several options so you can avoid these mistakes.
get the feedback you need and be really confident in relying on the results to build your case. If you want to talk about the options for your case, book a free call with the link in the show notes. I really want lawyers to be able to run focus groups and know the reasons why. What is the value that is going to come out of focus groups? So let’s talk about a few other examples that I have. And number one to feed off what we just talked about is
how they will explain your case to you. So how they bring it back to you. Recently, we did a very short focus group that involved several different factors, but one of the things was quotas and possibility that was a quota given possible gender discrimination. And one of the point of views we got was, well, no, that’s the new person. A new person should always have more workload and be expected to work harder than the people who are already on the team.
Now that’s not a perspective that was ever entertained by the lawyer. So again, how are they going to explain their case to themselves right once they hear it? So great way to grab value from a focus group. The other thing that we talk about here on the podcast, but just to reiterate, is they’re going to find the case weaknesses. Now those could be facts or those could just be attitudes that they have. And naturally of course they’re going to find your strengths too.
Elizabeth Larrick (07:14.382)
But most of the time when people come to focus groups, they want to know what am I missing? What is there that is a weakness that I need to know about and fix? An example of this here recently again, another employment case, different situation, but the real big concern of the lawyers was offer letters and how were offer letters going to be perceived? Was it negative? Was it positive? Was it going to be a weakness for them? Turns out the feedback we got was no.
Offer letters are good. Nobody would want to change a job without having an offer letter to know that this is a true offer. It’s not risky if they’re going to lose one job and go to another one. It was great. So another great thing that we grab from focus groups and a reason to do focus groups is learning what point in time do you start your case? So
This goes back to our privacy and recency. The first thing people hear is generally the strongest piece in their brain that they’re gonna remember the most. So when you make the decision about where to start your opening, where to start your order of proof, it’s very important to know where do I start the story, right? Where do I bring this in? This also can be one of those questions of, I need to educate first before I can get to?
wrongdoing or pieces of the story. This example that I have comes from a food poisoning case. Now, naturally, the target defendants were in the distribution, right, not in the actual place where the actual event occurred. So we had to dial back to get them to the point of the story where it’s getting on the truck and it’s being shipped out, right? So that’s not normally where people would start the story and our focus groups
really keyed in on focusing on the last step, which was the delivery to the customer, right? well, it’s gotta be them, the restaurant, where it’s happened, right? It has to be, because that’s their personal experience. So it was very key when looking at and having a strategy session after this focus group was where to start. How do we get the focus away from the restaurant and onto the distribution line and the distributing company? Okay.
Elizabeth Larrick (09:39.992)
So that particular piece was gonna be key for them. And it’s key for you. Because if you start in the wrong spot, that’s where they’re always gonna go back to is the first thing they heard about your case, that’s what they’re gonna remember the most. So that’s where you can plant good seeds or get stuck in a bad seed and have to try constantly to overcome, right? That bias they may have in their mind immediately. All right, just a few other fun things and reasons why we focus group, finding underlying.
hidden attitudes or assumptions, learning what visual aids are needed. What can they just not conceptually put together in their mind, but maybe words on a page is not gonna help, but they literally need some kind of drawing to get them there. Also assessing case themes, if you’re using safety rules as part of a case theme, like focus groups are great to give you feedback on that. So ultimately, why trial lawyers focus group?
Well, we want to see and we want to hear how people think and talk about our cases, right? Regular people. But what does that really help us do as trial lawyers? Well, number one, we want to build better cases. That means you want to have stronger liability. You want to have stronger damages case. You want to have a case that has higher value before you went into that focus screw. And that is one of the main reasons why
I strongly encourage lawyers to do focus groups early on. Remember how we started this episode? We had a humdinger of a focus group, but the number one thing, the number one takeaway from that lawyer after listening to two hours of a really hard focus group where they were just dragging that case down was, this is going to trial and I have four months to prepare to come back to this table again and try again. But I know now,
which path I’m on and I need to stick to my guns and use my time wisely. So I hope that you have enjoyed this back to the basics episode about why trial lawyers focus group. And I hope you also know the other tools that you can use to get case value, apportionment of liability or responsibility, or big data study.
Elizabeth Larrick (12:01.656)
those are much more reliable tools because again, the field is going to be 2000, 3000, 4000 people, right? That’s a whole lot more reliable than sitting down with our discussion, the conversational focus groups. All right. And if you just want to win, then set yourself up a mock jury. That’s going to be the place where you’re going to go in, put on your best case, put on your best suit, have everybody else dress up, play witnesses, play the judge. And that’s where you can.
practice to win. All right. I hope this episode was helpful to you and until next time, thank you so much. Did you know that I also offer strategies, tips and stories in an email newsletter? That’s right. And if you join now, you will get access to the focus group trends email that’s going to start going out in 2026. So
You don’t want to miss any other free advice, then use the link in the show notes to sign up for the trial lawyer prep newsletter and the focus group trends email. They’ll start going out in 2026.