Why Zoom Focus Groups Should Be Your First Thought Compared to In Person [Ep 136]
In this episode, Elizabeth shares expert insights on transforming your trial preparation with Zoom focus groups. Discover the unique benefits of virtual sessions, including the ability to capture participants’ facial reactions up close, which can’t be replicated in traditional settings. Elizabeth uses her extensive experience and real-world examples to demonstrate how these online gatherings can deepen your understanding of juror behavior, enhancing your courtroom strategies.
Learn about the convenience and flexibility that Zoom focus groups offer, saving time and resources while allowing you to experiment with different formats. Elizabeth compares virtual and in-person focus groups, highlighting the distinct interactions possible through Zoom. Tune in to explore how these insights can strengthen your connections with clients and juries, ultimately boosting your effectiveness in court. Whether you’re a seasoned lawyer or new to virtual focus groups, this episode offers valuable strategies for your legal practice.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Advantages of Zoom focus groups over traditional in-person settings
- Benefits of capturing close-up participant reactions on Zoom
- Cost-effectiveness and convenience of online focus groups
- Flexibility and freedom in structuring virtual sessions
- Use cases for Zoom focus groups in pre-lawsuit and pre-mediation stages
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick (00:02.604)
Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. I’m your host, Elizabeth Leric, and we have a new episode here for you today. And I want to talk about Zoom focus groups because…
Despite talking about this and having lots of other folks in the trial lawyer world talk about doing online and virtual, I still have a few holdouts. So today we are going to talk about Zoom focus groups, what do I mean, what are the benefits, and how they really compare to in-person focus groups. So first I want to run down my stats because I think it’s really important to help
everybody listening to have a little bit of context about how many folks are really running virtual or Zoom focus groups, if you will, versus in-person. And just looking at my last year of 2024, I had four in-person and 62 Zoom focus groups with, that’s probably easily 40 plus lawyers. So we have some lawyers that come in and do multiples. I will talk about that here in a second, but
What I want us to really look at is how Zoom focus groups can really be different than in person and sometimes have added benefit. Before we jump in to the added benefits and a few other factors about Zoom focus groups, let’s dive in about what do I mean when I say Zoom focus groups.
Elizabeth Larrick (02:06.594)
because there’s a lot of people talking about virtual, about online. Sometimes that’s a survey and not necessarily the same thing. So for me, when I say a virtual focus group or a Zoom focus group, I’m talking about either a one hour, a two hour, or a three hour dedicated time where you’re having face-to-face interaction with eight to 10, up to 12 participants and having kind of a conversation with them.
And the styles of focus groups can significantly change with Zoom. And so we’ll talk a little about that later, the freedom that you have in sculpting those. But typically we’re talking about a shorter timeframe. We’re talking about doing all different kinds of topics and the size is very manageable for one person. And we’re really getting those one-on-one conversations. And so that’s really what I mean when I say Zoom focus groups is very different than a survey.
where basically people are coming in and maybe they’re watching a video and then they answer questions. This is really kind of a group dynamic where we’re having conversations with folks. And so let’s talk then about those added benefits from Zoom focus groups that you cannot get within person. So what do I mean by added benefit? Well, it goes right with my episode title, which means getting in their faces. On a Zoom focus group, you have the ability to record everybody’s
very close and personal faces and their reactions. And that’s just not something that can be replicated in person. In person, you typically have one, maybe you have two videographers. And typically within person, you’re going to get a very wide screenshot of participants and a videographer will also be on the presenter. So you don’t get this very up close and personal reactions that you would in Zoom.
Likewise, what you get to see, so does everybody else. So those participants are also getting and being impacted by the face-to-face interactions they can see from their fellow participants, which has an impact versus thinking through jurors who are sitting basically most of the time and they don’t see each other’s faces at all until deliberation. So there is a lot of extra benefit there in being able to have those face-to-face reactions. Let me give you a couple of specific examples.
Elizabeth Larrick (04:31.092)
When you have video testimony, when you have video footage of the event, it is crucial to be able to go back and really dial in and see who is reacting and how are they reacting? What faces are they making? Recently, we had a focus group with some dash cam footage and really wanted to understand what do they see first and what is there? they having a blink reaction? And
you know, being able to have that Zoom feature of seeing everybody’s face and then be able to go back and watch it. It’s super helpful to those lawyers to be able to determine, how do we do these depositions that are coming up? And how do we need to even modify this video to help the jurors ultimately, when they do get to see the video, make decisions about it? So that’s super helpful. Number one, added benefit that you can’t get in person. Number two is the convenience factor. This is huge. Before the pandemic, we…
probably could not have the amount of Zoom focus groups that we do now because the technology barrier is completely gone. People are using Zoom for school, their kids’ school, going to the doctor, talking to financial advisors. They use it all the time. They’re very familiar with it and they’re used to it. And they find it as convenient as you do to be able to push that button, join that meeting and push it to leave. And so that is number one that we are really going to be able to save a lot of time, hassle,
expense, energy versus doing in person. And that’s why I always tell people it’s really convenient to do these because if you need to do one quickly in less than a week or maybe a week, you can do that. You can’t do that in person anymore. There are so many barriers that have been put up by places that rent rooms out that make it difficult, if not impossible, to be able to move quickly on a budget.
And so we avoid a lot of the expenses, the room rentals, the food, the travel time to get there, even sometimes parking and having to pay people additional money for that hassle, right? You can actually pay people less on Zoom focus groups than you can in person because you’re cutting out a lot of the hassle that they get to avoid by being able to push that button quickly on their computer. And just to give you an example of some of the hassle recently on one of these in-person focus groups that I did was
Elizabeth Larrick (06:51.15)
we had a larger than normal group. had over 24 people there and they didn’t set up the room exactly as we wanted. Always an issue. But we need another table. So I go ask for another table, don’t think anything of it. And then they charged me $20 for the extra table. They just said, put it out. We moved it. So it’s these little bitty things that are getting kind of nickel and dimed in there and not to mention the other expenses of videographers. So
It’s just much more convenient. You can reach more people than you would in person, right? So if you’ve got kind of a, I won’t say unique, but a different geographic area, for example, folks out in Montana, they have a very, very wide spread state. It is not convenient to jump in the car and drive a couple hours to be able to do an in-person focus group, whereas easily set up Zoom and get folks from all over to be able to join. Now.
Another really important bonus that we get when we do Zoom focus groups is the freedom and flexibility. Because we are doing smaller timeframes, these one hour, two or three hours, we really have the ability to have freedom to do different styles, right? So typically with these in-person groups, because you’re going all in, you’ve got the large expense, you’re going to be doing a mock jury. You’re going to be even maybe you’re doing a mini mock jury, but still you’re having a lot of time and you’re doing the whole case.
With these Zoom focus groups, you can piecemeal it out and do different pieces of a case. You can do pre-lawsuit Zoom focus groups to figure out, I want to even file this lawsuit? Do people even care about what’s going on? And also, how do I frame it? What do people get drawn to? What are the questions in their mind? A pre-lawsuit is a great place to do a Zoom focus group to get you on the right track. And again, sometimes to avoid some pitfalls. The other thing is just
We could easily run a style where it’s just depot clips. How are they piecing it together based on the testimony? How are they going to gauge the credibility of your client? Do they like him or not like him? What’s missing from that testimony? You can do a pre-mediation. You can use them to find your safety rules if that’s strategy that you want to use. Test your visuals. There’s a lot of freedom here. If you just have one concern about a case, it’s much easier to run a one-hour or two-hour focus group than it is to
Elizabeth Larrick (09:12.526)
put everything together for an in-person. Even if you wanted to do a short in-person focus group, you want to be able to make it longer to squeeze all that effort, that energy, and that money that you’re putting into it. It just doesn’t make sense to do a two-hour in-person unless you own the space and you’re willing to do whatever it takes to have those happen. And that is totally an option if you do. Naturally, people walk into a law firm to do a focus group, they’re immediately biased. They’re not gonna buy that it’s not your case.
There’s going to be other factors that roll into that. So let’s get back to our freedom and flexibility. And one thing that we mentioned earlier, which is the speed with which you can put these things together. And if you need one quickly, you’re at trial, you need one on a Saturday, your team could put that together, go in there, practice your opening or whatever it may be between trial or maybe you just really want to get that extra information before you go to that deposition. Or recently, ran a two-hour focus group for some folks.
And they went to deposition and lo and behold, the defense gave a whole new position on the case. And so they called me up and they said, okay, this is the one issue we need. Only thing we want to test. said, okay, let’s do one hour and let’s see what they think. And we can then put those things together, which that’s the other part about doing Zoom is you can do more than one on a case. You’re not going to break the bank by doing one Zoom focus group, right? You could break the bank by doing one in-person focus group or mock jury. And so
This episode really, I want to be able to have people open to the idea of using Zoom for your jury research, for your focus groups, because if you can get some clarity, some certainty about how people think, you can make better decisions in your case, make that decision about settling or trying the case, and or knowing what your number is. One of the episodes where I talked to a lawyer hit her first focus group, I got to do together with her Zoom focus group.
which was Brooke Rogan, and I’ll put the link in the show notes. She talked about the confidence that those focus groups, very simple focus groups gave her when she went into those depositions, take those last minute expert depositions, and to know what her number was and not back down from it. And she got it. They didn’t even have to go to trial. So there are a lot of extra values that come from doing Zoom focus groups. And being able to do these in-house,
Elizabeth Larrick (11:39.022)
makes it a whole other amazing gem to add to your practice. And I will link in the show notes to the two blogs that I’ve recently put out on how to do your own virtual research. They’re long, that’s why there’s two, but you can catch those in the show notes as well. All right, I hope that this episode was helpful. I hope that if you’re on the fence, that now you feel better, maybe, okay, maybe I’m gonna try it out and go talk to somebody else.
plenty of episodes and I always talk to folks here on my podcast about if someone’s on the fence, what would you tell them? And the consensus overwhelmingly is so eye-opening what you can learn. And they’re so beneficial beyond what you even imagine what you’re going to get that you don’t want to go without doing them once you start. All right. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Don’t forget, you can catch it on YouTube. All right. Until next time, thank you.