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Mock Trials Trial Practice Guidance Juror

U.S. Legal Support

Discover the Benefits of Mock Trials

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Case preparation can take months of research, depositions, and strategic planning—all for that one high-pressure moment in court. Even learning how to write a good opening statement can take a considerable amount of time and...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Know the Right N: How Participant Numbers Influence the Value of Your Mock Trial

Your typical mock trial might involve three juries, with a total of 30 or so mock jurors. The typical public opinion poll run by an organization like Gallup, however, can involve more like 1000 participants. So what is the...more

IMS Legal Strategies

Using Jury Research to Benefit Your Case Story & Strategy

IMS Legal Strategies on

As most litigators know, jurors’ attitudes and opinions often influence how they filter the facts of a case. It is through these lenses that jurors develop their perceptions of the parties and their corresponding motives,...more

IMS Legal Strategies

Integrated Case Themes & Nuclear Verdict Causes – Episode 46

IMS Legal Strategies on

IMS Strategy Consultant Dr. Clint Townson discusses the benefits of early case theme development and the factors leading jurors to award massive damages....more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Experts: Use Anecdotes, not Just Data

For those trained in the sciences, relying on illustrations or examples is not considered nearly as good as relying on data. If they call something “anecdotal,” then there is a good chance that the word “merely….” precedes...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Know Your Jurors’ Anger Buttons

The instructions for jurors are clear: They are to take an issue that has no effect on them, listen dispassionately to the evidence and arguments, apply the facts to the law, and make a decision. That is the model, but in...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Pre-instruct Your Jurors on Hindsight

Jurors are often put in the position of assessing the probability or risk of something at the time a decision was made, before the consequences can be known. “How likely is it that a given result will be the outcome from a...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Reconsider the Summary Jury Trial

A number of years ago, innovators searching for ways to take some of the pain, delay, and difficulty out of the jury trial hit upon the idea to boil it down, rein in the discovery, simplify the rules of evidence, and try it...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Expect Jurors to Project Themselves into the Situation

A ‘Golden Rule’ argument is one that encourages jurors to put themselves in a party’s shoes and think about what they would or wouldn’t have done. It leads to an objection because it encourages the juror to embrace a personal...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Make Your Slides Less Texty: Six Tips

In any challenging communication situation, it is best to combine the visual with the verbal. This is good practice because pictures tend to make things more “truthy,” in the sense that claims that are accompanied by relevant...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Expect that Your Jury Is Going to Bring up Those ‘Forbidden Topics’

“We are not supposed to talk about this.” If you’re observing a mock trial, that is often something you hear from one of the mock jurors…just as they begin to talk about it: insurance coverage and attorneys’ fees. Strictly...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Avoid Persuasive Misalignment

In the case of any argument or persuasive appeal you are making, you can ask the question, “Who are you aiming at?” In a jury trial, your answer might be, “The jury, of course.” But who on that jury are you aiming at in...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Address the Subjectivity of Pain and Suffering

The damages category of “pain and suffering” is notoriously uncertain, at least in jurors’ estimation. The act of quantifying and monetizing a plaintiff’s subjective experience associated with a loss or an injury can be a...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Account for One Reason the Polls Are Broken: Social Alienation

We all know by now there were errors in the pre-election polls. While Joe Biden still scored a decisive win, there wasn’t the dramatic margin that many polls predicted. Part of the problem is that the task of sampling the...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Appreciate the Advantages of Online Mock Trials

In the past couple of months, I have heard of just a couple of in-person mock trials that have gone forward. They’ve done so with temperature checks, massive social distancing, sometimes masked mock jurors, and generally...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Add Numeracy to Your Jury

Watching a mock jury deliberate about damages can give you the idea that when it comes to numbers, jurors can be a little random. For example, a jury might see a big difference between $500,000 and $1 million in one moment,...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Interview Your Jurors with Purpose: Eight Ways

The chance to interview a juror is a precious opportunity. Whether it is a mock juror interviewed in the course of a focus group or mock trial, or an actual juror interviewed after they are dismissed at the end of trial, an...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Address the ‘My House, My Responsibility’ Analogy

There is a persistent belief among many mock jurors that I have seen in certain kinds of cases. The belief is that liability attaches automatically to possession, and jurors usually express it through the lens of home...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Understand Jurors’ Process on Pain and Suffering

Juror 1: “The next category is ‘pain and suffering.’ How are we supposed to get to get that number?” Juror 2: “It is just whatever we want…there’s no guidance for it.“ Juror 1: “How are we supposed to do that? Put a...more

Holland & Hart - Your Trial Message

Don’t Just Warn About Hindsight

Within the last week, I have conducted two mock trials on cases that are strongly susceptible to hindsight. In both defense cases, once you know the outcome, it is very easy to see past events or conditions as big red flags...more

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