Predict Court Verdicts and Awards with Mock Juries

As an attorney don't you wish you were a mind reader? Wouldn't it be great if you went into a trial with a good idea of what jurors would think and do? Would your client like an idea of whether or not a jury finds their civil case sympathetic? That knowledge could be extremely valuable to you when planning your case. And fortunately, you can be a mind reader -- or at least you can read a similar set of people before going to court.

What's the solution to your problem of people's unpredictability? Mock jurors.

What are Mock Juries?

A mock jury is a type of focus group. An attorney recruits a random group of people from the jurisdiction of their case to serve as mock jurors. These mock jurors are paid for their attendance.

Mock juries hear both sides of a case, in as unbiased a way as possible. It might involve a relatively short summary of the primary facts on each side, or you could even run a full-scale mock trial.

In the end, the mock jury is sometimes asked for a verdict (in criminal cases) or to choose a judgment amount (for civil cases). But that isn't always the primary purpose of a mock jury. In other situations they're used to find out how a real jury might react to testimony from a defendant, or how they might react to a certain type of evidence. Hiring mock jurors is ultimately about helping you and your client make better educated decisions related to your case.

Why Should You (and Your Client) Use a Mock Jury?

Is a mock jury right for your case? It couldn't hurt. But here are some specific issues mock juries can help you work through. If any of them apply to you, your client or your case, hiring mock jurors could help you avoid unpleasant surprises in court.

•    You worry your client won't come across as trustworthy to a jury, possibly because of communication issues on their part, from speech patterns to body language. A mock jury can let you see whether or not your client's peers believe his testimony.
•    You are concerned that your client will simply come across as "unlikeable," prejudicing a jury against him.
•    You aren't sure how members of a jury will react to a certain piece of evidence you expect prosecutors to share, and you want to "test it" on a similar group of people beforehand. For example, you might want to know if something particularly gruesome will automatically influence prejudice in some way against your client.
•    You feel your client is so overconfident that he or she isn't taking the case seriously, and you want them to see a mock juror's reaction as a kind of reality check of what could go wrong.
•    You and your client want to know if jurors in a civil case would likely award high enough damages to make the case worthwhile.
•    You want a general idea of how a similar jury might decide your case.
•    You're interested in doing general research outside of a current case to find out how potential jurors in your area respond to certain types of evidence. This can help you identify things like community biases that could affect multiple cases and jury selection in the future.

Mock juries are all about giving you directly relevant research in a sort of focus group format, so you can plan out the most effective case possible.