What is a do-it-yourself virtual jury research focus group? What does it look like and how do you make one? This is the first part of our DIY Virtual Focus Group two-part series, where we break down why we’re doing virtual focus groups, what virtual focus groups are, and how we do them.
Be sure to also tune into Part 2 of this series as we dive into how to set up virtual focus groups in terms of logistics or the back-end stuff. Think about setting up Zoom, Paypal, and confidentiality agreements.
The goal at the end of this two-part series is to give you a complete picture of how to do your own virtual focus group so you can finally get started. They’re so easy to set up and the benefits are just as great so this is definitely something you need to try doing to better prepare for your cases.
In this episode, you will hear:
- What are virtual focus groups?
- Why now is the time to start running them and preparing your cases
- The benefits of focus groups: clarity, certainty, and confidence
- Reasons for doing focus groups
- Some simple approaches for starting virtual focus groups
- Quick turnaround time
- Why do you need to run focus groups early on?
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Supporting Resources:
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If you’d like to learn more about different styles of focus groups, check out this quick blog.
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: [00:00:00] Welcome to Trial Lawyer Prep. What if you could hang out with trial lawyers and jury consultants, ask them about connecting with clients and juries more effectively, then take strategies, tactics, and insights to increase your success? Each week, Elizabeth Larrick takes an in depth look at how to regain touch with the everyday world, understand the emotional burden of your clients and juries, and use focus groups in this process.
Elizabeth is an experienced trial lawyer, consultant, and founder of Larrick Law Firm in Austin, Texas.
Hello and welcome to a new episode of Trial Lawyer Prep, the podcast designed to help trial lawyers prepare better cases so they can sleep better at night. I’m your host, Elizabeth Larrick, and I’m excited to talk about a two part series that This episode number [00:01:00] 19 and next episode, number 20, we are going to DIY virtual focus groups for you.
That’s right. Do it yourself, virtual focus groups. We want to break it down to make it super easy. This episode is going to be about why we’re doing virtual focus groups, what it is that focus groups are, virtual focus groups, how to do them, meaning presenting and, and that kind of stuff and questions. And then next episode, we will dive into the, how to set I’m on the website, logicianst Mcdonald’s, and you can find me on my blog at logicianst Good luck with your journey.
Good luck for you. Bye bye. I love using focus groups for my cases and naturally, all of that in person focus groups came to a halt pretty much [00:02:00] two years ago from the date of me recording this episode. Kind of weird. Didn’t know that was going to happen. And I just thought, well, we’ll be back. April will be back.
May will be back. And uh, We weren’t. So I ventured into doing virtual focus groups, never done it before, never even thought that that would even be possible or would work out or get the good feedback. And I just jumped in. I had a lot of help pushing me to do virtual. So big shout out to Lexley Overton for her help during that time to get me to jump in and it worked out.
I’ve done over. 200 or more virtual focus groups. I’ve done some in person focus groups recently and It’s great. They’re fantastic. They’re so easy to set up. The benefits are just as great. So that’s why I really want to pass on this information to my listeners to help them do their own. Because that’s really ultimately kind of how I got [00:03:00] started several years ago in person was just me and a group of other folks, a bunch of solos wanted to do some focus groups.
So we’ve collected all of our resources. Somebody brought a conference room, somebody else brought the video recorder and I just brought the, okay, I’m going to figure out how to do this and collected the participants and got them to show up. And it was great. And of course we fumbled around a little bit, but we still got feedback and we got better as we went along.
And so anyhow, that’s really what we want to focus on today is passing on an even easier way to do focus groups. And that would be virtual. So, let’s kind of talk a little bit about what do I mean when I say virtual focus groups. Traditionally, we think about mock trials, and what I’m more focusing on when we talk about virtual focus groups are smaller case preparation style legal focus groups, where we’re looking at either real specific issues.[00:04:00]
Real specific pieces, maybe it’s just mediation. And we’re trying to make the case better. Trying to get feedback, trying to make sure that things are looking the way that we think they should for a jury. And it’s much more bite sized. There’s a lot less pressure on you as a lawyer to prepare it, to get it ready, and also it’s done at a time where you can synthesize the information.
Apply it immediately. Maybe you go do some more depositions and come back and run a different focus group or inject that new information you have in that focus group. So they’re intended to be bite size. They’re intended to be used more than once. And most of the focus groups when we do them virtually are really down into bite size, either an hour, you can do two hours, three hours.
You can do them longer, but we’ll talk about what happens if you do it too long. Everybody just kind of zones out. So that’s what I mean by, like, the types of legal focus groups, which is something that’s easy, digestible, easy to prepare, that can be [00:05:00] done in an hour, can be done in two hours, or, you know, multiple cases in two hours.
So that’s really kind of what we’re talking about when we say legal focus groups or virtual focus groups. And I really think that now is the time. That all law firms have the ability to do this. No matter how big you are or how small you are, even if you’re a solo like me, you still can put these together in a way that is very cost effective.
It gets you the information that you need. And really you’re going to gain a lot of confidence in the case that you have, which is fantastic. So, Zoom is everywhere. All our kids are doing Zoom for class, even college is doing Zoom. We all see our doctors through Zoom or some other kind of platform like it, Google Meet, you name it.
There’s all kinds of online video technology out there, which means it’s everywhere. Everybody’s got it. I have not run into a single problem about people not having experience with Zoom or know how to [00:06:00] use it, which is great. I mean, that would probably have been my concern before if I was trying to do virtual, which is like, wow, nobody has the technology, but now it’s just easy.
Everybody’s got it. Everyone’s used it to try to talk to loved ones. When we were really during lockdown in 2020 and at times in 2021. So the technology is readily available. You don’t even have to worry about it. It’s free as well to anybody who’s joining in. It’s really cost effective for law firms and solos, you know, before.
You’d have to have a space, maybe you can have a space at your office, but basically you’re going to have to feed folks. You’re going to have to host folks. I mean, there’s a time and there’s an energy factor in that for you and your staff. Maybe you have to get in the car and go somewhere. If you have to do that, I mean, all those things are really going to cost you, but with virtual, just a click of a button.
So it really makes it very helpful convenience wise for you and everybody else. If you’re going to do a focus group with another lawyer. They could be anywhere. Be a lawyer up in [00:07:00] Nebraska, up in California, and all they have to do is just tune in with you. So it makes it really easy to collaborate with folks across the country if maybe you all need to get together to do a focus group.
You don’t have anybody locally that needs to do one. It’s easy to collect folks up to join in with you, cut those costs if you need to. Or split up the responsibilities, which is also a great way to make it cost effective. Virtual is also going to give you that same fantastic feedback that you need.
There’s always a worry about, well, we’re going to miss the body language or the group is not going to have the same interactions. There is a slight bit of that. I mean, naturally, because we’re virtual, but really I’ve not had a problem where people were very disconnected or did not voice their opinions.
And it actually is. It’s really helpful because you really are seeing their face and it’s all, their faces are recorded up close. I mean, that’s really difficult to do unless you hire a [00:08:00] videographer to basically zoom in on every person who’s speaking and even then that’s really difficult. So the recording is fantastic in that sense of gaining the feedback, but also being able to see that visual of their face reacting to other people, which sometimes gets missed when you’re in person.
You’re still going to get the same great feedback that you would need if you were in person. So again, super beneficial. Super cost effective and convenient as far as for you and staff. And I mean, you can put them together on a dime. That’s really, really easy. And a lot of folks, everybody out there is looking for extra work.
They’re looking for other stuff to supplement what’s going on or There’s still a lot of people that haven’t entered back into the workforce, or maybe they’re changing their job and doing something else and they have opportunity or time on their hands. I’ve run into lots of participants who are changing jobs right now, or they’re interviewing for another job.
So they have some time on their hands and you know, obviously [00:09:00] technology is easy. They’re going to click on and, you know, make a couple extra dollars. So there’s lots of people out there looking for this type of work right now. So we know we’re going to do them and we know that they’re helpful, but really why are we doing them?
I talked a little earlier about how virtual focus groups can really be bite size, meaning very easy, one hour shots at information or feedback that you need. And one of the things I always stress about focus groups and still the same way about virtual focus groups, which is finding some clarity in all focus groups, no matter what you walk in as a lawyer and you give your presentation, whatever it may be.
Let’s say you give an opening. Let’s say you give a timeline. Let’s say you just walk in and you just have a conversation with them. Just ask them some questions. What they give back to you is basically their understanding, which generally is always going to be a simplified version of what you gave them.
That alone. is so significant because we tend to [00:10:00] complicate things. I think that’s a result of being in law school and being told to look at every minute piece of everything and turn over every rock and look for everything and complicate things. And, No matter what happens, you’re going to gain simplification from focus groups.
They’re going to make things simpler back to you. And that alone is really, really helpful for any case, simplifying the presentation, simplify the issues. You’re always going to gain some level of clarity. on your case. So that’s always helpful no matter what you do with any focus group, virtual or in person, you’re going to gain that clarity, that simplification.
Another thing we use focus groups for, and I mean, definitely for me, I personally need to use focus groups to gain certainty, right? So I have my point of view on a case and I think, well, that’s going to be the jurors point of view, but there may be something that is causing some doubt. Right? [00:11:00] So, for example, you’ve got this point of view, you’ve been working up the case, you’re ready to go to mediation, you’ve taken depositions, and you walk into mediation and the defense comes in very strong, almost aggressive.
Causing you a little bit of doubt, like, wait a minute. Maybe this isn’t as strong as I thought. Maybe I have some doubt going on. I’ve been stuck in my own mind, my own point of view. Holy mackerel. What do I do? Well, let’s take to a focus group. Let’s just see what a focus group says. If there’s any credibility in that defense argument, they’re going to tell you about it.
And in that sense gaining some certainty about, is my point of view. The juror point of view, or is it just a little bit flawed? Am I just a little bit too sucked into things? Did I miss something? That level of certainty is so helpful. Especially if you’re investing time, you’re investing money. I mean, that means time and money, you’re not spending on other cases and [00:12:00] I mean, these are huge resources that we really need to make sure that we’re picking the right case to do that with.
Don’t get me wrong. I have been in that place where I have spent a lot of money and a lot of time on a case that I just got lost in that point of view. And guess what? It wasn’t the right point of view. So, you know, avoid the pain, get some feedback along the way. And that’s why I love virtual because it’s just.
It’s simple. You can do it one hour and you’re going to get so much back. That’s helpful to you. And then ultimately confidence, knowing that you’ve done the hard work, you’ve done the preparation and what you give the focus group comes right back to you. That is really going to give you a lot of confidence to turn down that low end offer to feel good about we’re going into trial and that confidence.
You’re going to be able to translate that also to your client, right? So knowing that you’ve kind of really prepared in every single facet. And take into account the jury along the way with you, which [00:13:00] I think sometimes is what we forget. It’s okay. It happens. I’m a sucker for it, too. It’s happened to me, too.
But, like I said, focus groups will help you with that. So let’s kind of turn and talk a little bit about how. How are we going to present? What are we going to present? In these virtual focus groups, I’ve got a couple of resources and I’m happy to post them in the show notes as far as a blog that goes into a little more detail about some of these styles of focus groups.
We’re going to talk about. So I’ll put that in the show notes, but I do want to think about let’s think about crafting this. So we’ve got a virtual focus group. Let’s just take it down and let’s just say you’re going to use two hours. And okay, so you’ve got these folks for two hours. Maybe you’ve got a burning case, like it’s about to go to trial, or maybe it’s going to go to mediation, or you’ve got a couple that are leading into mediation.
Those are great ones to pick. Something that’s on fire and you need to have something immediate. Sometimes it’s great if you’ve got a new case that just came in the door and you want to make sure and get some feedback [00:14:00] before you file that lawsuit. That’s another really good one. And here’s why. So the earlier in the case, sometimes it’s a little bit easier to craft a presentation.
So one of the easiest presentations you can do in a short amount of time, 30 40 minutes, is to basically just put together what I call a snapshot. Just a real brief set of facts. Neutral both sides, but mostly all facts, no opinions yet. And couple that with some pictures of things to give everybody kind of a visual of what’s going on.
And you just basically kind of read through those facts, show the pictures, and then just kind of ask some questions about what happened. And when I say ask some questions, I mean, ask open ended questions. What happened here? What else would you want to know? If you already know that you’ve got two sides of the story, you can tell people the two sides of the story.
The thing about the snapshot is to, you’re always going to give an even amount of information on both sides. So if you tell, well, the red car says that they had the green light. Well, you need to go ahead and tell me what the [00:15:00] black car says to you, right? To even that out. That’s why you’d want to have a picture of the red car and a picture of the black car, right?
Snapshots try to be very even handed in the information presenting kind of both sides in a very neutral way just to see, Hey, what do you get back? And the earlier in the case is a little bit better because then they’ll tell you, Hey, I’d want to know about this witness or is there a camera somewhere?
And. Sometimes there’s not. That’s okay. Just keep that in your mind because if you don’t have that information or it’s not available, that doesn’t mean the jurors aren’t still going to have that question in your mind. That’s still good information to write down and keep in there if you do have to go to trial to remember that.
If you want to even make it more simpler, just create a timeline of the case and put the timeline in front of them. Use PowerPoint or You don’t even have to get that fancy with PowerPoint, just put a Word document up there that basically lays out the timeline of the events of the case and just ask people what happened, right?
Very big open ended questions. Another great, small, simple virtual focus group is to do witness credibility. I recently did one of [00:16:00] these for some folks that were going to go to deposition. They had four separate clients, four very different clients. This was not a family situation. This was just a case that had four clients with four different claims.
It was an employment case. And all we did was we took five minute videos of the clients and then played that video. And they answered three simple questions. What’s your name? What’s your job? What’s this case about? What’s your claim? That’s it. Three very simple questions. They answered however they wanted.
And we put that in front of the focus group and we said, Hey, are they credible? Is what they’re saying makes sense? Is it clear? What else would you want to know? Those are four really simple questions. That’s all we did. And that was our time. And then we got some great feedback to help with these individuals with their deposition prep so that we knew, hey, there’s a tendency here maybe to go off story.
So we need to back on the facts. We got to make things really clear on the [00:17:00] front end when these folks are talking in their deposition. So that’s another great one. I’ve also used witness credibility where we kind of paired it up with a snapshot, meaning We had a very disputed car wreck case. Have you ever heard one of those?
And some guy was going straight and then ran off the road. And anyhow, at the scene, only one side of the story got told and the client was very adamant. That’s not how it happened. I have a Google map and the police really wouldn’t listen then, but they did listen later. So anyhow, we really did have two kind of separate stories about what happened.
So we told the story with the visuals, right? Meaning here’s the story, here’s the visuals, there’s all the pictures. And then we played some video clips from, here’s what driver in the white truck says, play. Here’s what the witness says, play. Here’s what the driver of the black truck says, play. And then we said, okay, what happened?
Who’s telling the truth? Who’s the most credible person? What’s going on? And so helpful, [00:18:00] right? Because That was basically going to be trial. So there’s ways to pair it up to make it easy for you to put together, right? Those were just putting together the facts, gathering up a couple of pictures, the testimony in that last one I just talked about was actual deposition testimony.
So all that just had to be clipped out, put together. I mean, you can share a screen so quickly with zoom, so you don’t have to put it in anything fancy. If you just, as long as you have the window open, zoom will open that window and you can play that video, make it super simple. And with the shorter ones, what I always tell people.
If it’s an hour, you really only need maybe 20 minutes of information because you really want to spend most of the time talking and with virtual, it’s really easy to make sure every person talks. And that’s generally what I say at the start of my virtual focus groups. Today is really about gathering every person’s feedback.
So I’m going to individually call on everybody to give their feedback. So now they’re ready. So when we go through, Hey, My first question, you know, what happened here? [00:19:00] Ross, will you start us off? All right. Thank you so much, Ross. Okay. Ryan. Okay. And if I want everyone just to jump in, then I’ll say, hey, free for all.
Here’s a question. Anybody wants to answer it, go. But that way everybody has a chance and they know that that’s what the moderator wants. So it’s really helpful to be able to call on people. You’ve got their names right in their square. You’re not going to forget someone’s name. Sometimes that happens in person, of course, you know, their name tags big enough, but with the shorter ones, just big, broad questions, you can write the questions out in front of you.
That’s the other really nice thing about virtual is you can have your webcam up looking at you and all your notes in front of you. And they don’t even know you’re looking at notes and they don’t even know you’re taking notes, right? And write notes along the whole way too. So that is also a really beneficial part about virtuals.
You’ve got a lot of stuff you can have in front of you to make sure you don’t miss anything. And the shorter they are, you know, easy, short questions, gathering everybody up. Even if you had a two hour one, you could do two different cases, maybe three cases, depending on the information. [00:20:00] Three would be kind of a squeeze for two hours because you got to kind of do a few other things in there housekeeping wise.
So that would be kind of a couple of different ones. We talked about doing a snapshot, which is a very neutral set of the facts. Just do a timeline. Talked about doing witness credibility or even combining, you know, witness credibility with a snapshot. Just to do a one hour or a two hour virtual focus group just to get some real quick feedback on one or two cases.
When to run virtual focus groups. So because they are so easy to set up and you can do it so quickly and get people very quickly, ready to go, you know, the turnaround time is really quick as far as being able to say, Hey, you know what, my mediation is on March 31st. Let’s do a virtual focus group next week.
Done. You’ll have it done. You’ll have time to process all the feedback, maybe make clips if you need it for the mediation, plenty of time to do all that. And again, because such a quick turnaround, it’s really easy. So, that’s nice, but really what I was explaining was [00:21:00] when you would do them, you can do them any time.
Right. Talked about how the earlier you do the virtual focus groups, you can do more of them again, because we’re talking about doing bite sized one, we’re not talking about doing six hours, you know, four hours. You can, if you have enough information, but sometimes the, we have cases that just come in, we just have really a brief set of facts.
Maybe there’s something glamorous about it. We want to test it out. Maybe it’s an unusual claim. We want to know more about what people think. think about the claim. That makes it really easy to jump in there and get something done 30, 40 minutes, an hour, but you can really conduct them anytime. And we talk about how if you want to do multiple ones and you’re gathering information along the way to kind of set up and make a blueprint, a plan that was another episode earlier on in this podcast about how do we make a blueprint
So if you think about it, if we’re going to do virtual, we’re going to do one hour for a case, yeah, it’s not unrealistic to think that you could do [00:22:00] five virtual focus groups for a case. Think about opening statement, doing a timeline, mediation presentation, witness credibility, and a snapshot. There’s five.
You know, boom. And all those can be done along the way as you get more information and building a better presentation to get better feedback. So there’s really no wrong time to do them. It is a little bit disappointing if you wait too long to do one, because then we talked a little bit earlier, been stuck in our point of view, if you get stuck in your point of view and you spend all this time, money and effort, and then you do a focus group to realize, uh, I was focusing on the wrong thing.
Okay. That’s a bummer. Let’s not do that. Let’s avoid that bummer moment that like, Oh man, I just missed the mark. I’ve been there, had that pain. So I really try to do focus groups early. And that way I can have that feedback in my mind as I’m getting ready for deposition. As I’m thinking about [00:23:00] mediation, I’ve got even just the smallest things or clarity in my mind about How to make the issue simple, how the jury talked about this set of facts, super, super helpful, even if it’s just an hour long.
So, okay, let me just do a little recap here for this episode. We kind of talked about what a virtual legal folks group would be. Why now is a fantastic time to start running these things to prepare your cases better. And we talked about why are we doing them? And then a little bit about like how to, how do we think about putting together this time and do we use it for, and what are some simple approaches for, if we’re just starting out with focus groups, we’re just starting out, like what’s the easiest thing to do?
Low impact on you so that you’ll do it. And then ultimately when, which is. Whenever you want, because they’re easy to put together, your staff will get it down and throw one together very quickly for you. And when we [00:24:00] start our next episode, we are going to dive deep into the back end setup, the logistics, literally how we are putting these things together on zoom so that you can feel confident in that setup.
And then you can boom, start doing them. Paired that with this episode, number 19. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. I hope that it was helpful and gave you a little bit more information about DIY virtual focus groups and how they’re easy. You can do them. They’re great for your cases. They work wonders on your mental status.
So reduce some of that stress. So again, thank you so much for tuning in this episode. If you enjoyed it, please rate, review it, subscribe at that little plus button at the top corner. And also share it with other lawyers that, you know, always helpful to have other people join in the podcast. So thanks again and have a good [00:25:00] one.
