What do you get from jury research focus groups? Maybe you haven’t had a chance to use focus groups yet yourself. Or maybe you have run a mock trial on a case, but maybe haven’t looked at other ways to use focus groups. In this episode, we dive into some other ways you can use focus groups and why. I’m also sharing a couple of tips on ways to “double-dip” and how you can take and use all the data for an extra squeeze of information.
One of the most common things you get from using focus groups is to learn the result of the case – who wins and who loses? But it’s not just results-oriented because you can learn so much more. There’s witness credibility, evaluating the evidence, looking at case theory, looking at the knowledge base, testing out the defense theory, and just honing your skills as a trial lawyer. You can get a lot more than just trying to have this one target of determining the case value.
Now, if you don’t have a lot of experience doing focus groups, moderating, looking at it, analyzing the data, I just want to caution you that there are so many other great ways to use it. Whether you spend six hours, three hours, an hour, or even just 30 minutes, the amount of time you want to spend depends on the depth with which you are willing to go into the material and the depth of the feedback.
In this episode, you will hear:
- Mock trial vs. qualitative study
- Evaluating the evidence
- Testing your case theory and the credibility of people
- Using focus groups to file or not file
- Testing the knowledge base
- The double-dipping phase: how you can make the most of the data you get
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Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: [00:00:00] One of the biggest questions that I always get about focus groups is what do you get? You spend a lot of time, spend a lot of effort, a lot of money, but really what do you get from a jury research focus group? Stay tuned and we’ll talk about it. 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. Her goal is to help you connect with juries and clients in order to improve your abilities in the courtroom. Now here’s Elizabeth. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Trial Lawyer [00:01:00] Prep with me your host, Elizabeth Larrick.
This is a podcast designed and creative for trial lawyers working with difficult cases. Problematic clients and taking those difficult and problematic cases to trial. The goal is to help you connect with juries and clients in order to improve your abilities in the courtroom. In today’s episode, we are going to look at focus groups and answer one of the biggest questions that I get.
What do you get from a focus group? You more likely than not heard people talk about using focus groups in different CLEs that you’ve gone to. More likely than not, you’ve definitely read about it. If you’ve read any kind of trial book or case approach or case strategy book, and maybe you haven’t had a chance to use focus groups yet yourself.
Or possibly, maybe you fall in a category of somebody who has run a mock trial on a case, but maybe hasn’t looked at other ways to use focus groups. And so we want to tackle in this episode, what have we heard about [00:02:00] focus groups? And what are other ways to use focus groups? And why on earth would we do that?
Finally, a couple of tips on ways to double dip, use that data that you get for an extra squeeze of information, and then plant the seed for future episodes on how to, how are we going to do this? Because this is a podcast where I want to give you the how to, I want to show you, let’s talk about it, but then let’s give you the opportunity to do it for yourself.
Because that’s where I started. Focus groups. I had done a fellowship and I learned. Um, so I’m going to talk a little bit about how to use focus groups, how to use them. I did a ton of focus groups. We went to trial on the cases where we’d done the focus groups, and then I came home and had my own law firm and thought, I want to do focus groups.
How do I do it? So we did, I started and here we are now, but I started off in the same place. I had done maybe a few focus groups, not very many before I [00:03:00] jumped into a fellowship and we did tons of focus groups. So I started off doing focus groups in a kind of a piecemeal fashion. Instead of this large mock trial fashion, nothing wrong with that, but that’s kind of a starting place about what have we heard?
We’ve heard about these really large mock trial situations where there’s a really large production. We’re going to hire a judge to come play or have somebody come play a judge. We’ll have lawyers playing opposite sides and then basically put on a mock trial for a set of jurors, right? Mock jurors. A lot of times people set this up in a pretty large hotel where you can have two to three groups going at the same time, everything’s recorded, we’re watching, and we’re learning the ultimate result, right?
Who wins and who loses. And that’s what you get. Another form of focus group is a qualitative study where you have a [00:04:00] scenario in you, a fact scenario that you run by thousands of people online. So you would just gather this giant bank of data again on the results. Who wins? Who loses? What are the, what are the statistics?
How many times is Susie going to lose this case? Those are really what you get when we talk about doing a mock trial or a qualitative study. Now, I don’t want to limit qualitative studies. There’s lots of other things you can do with those, but you get the idea. It’s qualitative. You want thousands of results on that.
So let’s talk a little bit about Excel. So we talked first about results. We can figure out the ultimate question, who wins and who loses, plaintiff or defendant. But we can also look at pieces of the case. So we break our case down to people. Right? We can look at the people in our case and test their credibility.
Super easy one where [00:05:00] we just record people and put it up there and see what they say. But a lot of times we just want to learn, is our witness believable on a scale of one to 10? How credible are they? But you can also test other people in the case, right? Defense witnesses, experts, eyewitnesses. Um, and I think it’s really, really helpful when we’ve got a dispute about how events happen, right?
Dispute on liability. I recently conducted a focus group on a car wreck case where two extremely different stories, right? One story is, The truck’s going straight and somebody pulls out in front or the truck comes from the side and then runs into somebody. So it has to be A or B. There’s no gray area here.
And naturally, there’s lots of witnesses, but maybe they’re hard to find. We had to, took some years to get all these people. So gathered all this up and just showed videos of [00:06:00] these folks describing what happened and then just. Ask the focus group, are these people credible? And then actually like, what happened here?
Right, so this is everybody’s he said, she said, what really happened here? A great way to test our people in our case. Another thing to look at is just evaluating the evidence. Look at what you have. So most of the time in our case, we’ve got lots of deposition transcript, right? So we just talked about that, testing those people.
Maybe we’ve got a bunch of documents, a bunch of medical records. A lot of times people think, Oh, we got this hot doc. This is the one document that’s going to win the whole case. Well, put it in front of them. See if they reach the same conclusion. But another way to evaluate the evidence is throwing together a timeline.
Include key documents to see if that’s reinforcing your timeline. Do you have enough on your timeline? Maybe it’s super confusing. Maybe it needs to be visually a little more appealing. It’s a great test. Looking at photographs and videos. Nowadays, there’s a camera everywhere. And so. [00:07:00] Most things get caught on camera somehow, car wrecks or stores and everywhere else.
So that’s a really great way of just playing that video to see what they say. And again, is it clear? I mean, that’s one of the biggest reasons why I talk about putting it in front of a focus group is if it’s just fuzzy, if it’s just blurry, if it’s just confusing, it may not be this winning piece of evidence that you believe it to be.
or conversely that the defense believes it to be. So super helpful on those elements and with photographs. Sometimes people come to me, Hey, these are the photographs I want to use. And I’m just like, ah, I kind of have a visceral reaction to some of these photographs because I don’t think people are going to like that.
They look like maybe you’re looking for sympathy or maybe they’re Just too grotesque. I don’t know. Let’s not take my opinion for it. Let’s just see what the focus group says. So testing our, evaluating our pieces of evidence, right? Timelines, demonstratives, photographs, records, if we’ve got those, good [00:08:00] way to test those out.
Another way is just, you know, Testing your case theory. Is it good? Is it bad? And I hate to use those words good and bad, but it’s more in the sense of, do they follow it? Does it make sense? Is it too far of a stretch? Is it not a stretch enough? You know, they will help you with that. Also, I like to look at using focus groups to file or not file, right?
So we looked at, okay, so we got results. We got pieces of the case, but ultimately. File or not file. A lot of times people will say, well, I think this is a good case, but it’s a really unusual claim or it’s a really unusual set of facts. And I just want to see what people think about it. Like, should I file this case or not?
And I do quite a few of those. And I think that that’s one. a really good use of information, right? Half of our job as lawyers is to provide evaluations. What’s my case value? And do you think that they’re going to settle or will this have to go to a trial? And do you feel like this is strong enough? We are constantly evaluating and [00:09:00] that’s what people ask us for.
And if you’re having to make a decision about filing or not filing, maybe it’s an unusual case or premises liability cases, a lot of times when they come in my door, I always run it through a focus group to see, should I invest? The question is, is there a way we can invest in this case? I believe it a hundred percent, but we could invest in this case and just realize like, wow, there’s just, the jury’s just never going to go with us.
I kind of want to know that on the outside. And I would think that a client does too. And most of the time when I work with clients and I run through focus group and I just let him know, like the law is really, really thin it’s really, really hard. And also a focus group just was not favorable. Let me tell you things that they pointed out and it’s helpful for me in to explain it to them, but also say, Hey, I want to go the extra mile.
I, you know, I want to make sure and check all the boxes before I tell you, gosh, I just, I just don’t think there’s a case here. So super helpful there. Another place where you can, you know, what do you get would be kind of a knowledge base [00:10:00] asking, what do you know? Maybe finding out the experience level that people have.
Maybe it’s common sense and you don’t need to explain something, or maybe it’s really professional grade and you’re going to have to spend some time explaining things. And that could be medically. Maybe you’ve got some unusual medical situations or unusual, I would say, situations. Maybe there’s scientifically or technically things get kind of complicated.
How much do they know? What’s their blink reaction to some of these things? And that really helps to know how much do you need to have your, Experts explain. How much should you explain an opening? A really good how to on a focus group like this is we ran a focus group recently where there was a lawyer disagreeing a little bit with the client.
Client disagreed with the lawyer about, of course, the facts of the case. And it was an employment case and it all came down to employee, So if you type in oh, let’s, let’s test people on independent contractor. What do you think about it? [00:11:00] So let’s test people on independent contractor. What do you think about it?
So we just, let’s test people on independent contractor. We just selected, selected independent contractor. And then we showed up on the board and people just rattled off. What do you think? And we had people write it down. We talked about it out loud just to get kind of their blink reaction to it and what they thought and ultimately what their experience was.
Had anybody worked as independent contractors? Anybody worked as an employee? And what does that mean? And what do you expect? But we ultimately also put the jury charge, the jury instructions, if you will, in front of them. And ask them, does this make sense? Is this what you thought? Was there anything that surprised you?
What would be confusing or need to be explained? And I love doing that with lots of other jury charges, just to make sure you’re covering all those bases. Because you don’t want to put all effort into every other piece of it, and they get down to that jury charge, and they just get confused. Because they’re confused, they go the wrong way.
And focus group net will tell you what they’re confused [00:12:00] about. Another good way to use a focus group is to hone your skills, to practice, right? To get your craft down and talking about doing jury selection to groups of people or practicing doing opening statement with your demonstratives at the same time.
It’s a really good place to. Practice your inflection, your speaking, your clarity, and also a jury section, like, what are people going to say? What are their responses? Is that question falling flat? Okay, if it does, how do you, how do you backpedal? How do you get out of that place? You know, maybe you get a response that you don’t want or a response that goes off, you
I can tell you from my personal experience, using focus groups has significantly helped me be a better speaker, be a better communicator, and definitely been a better listener. And listening, such a key skill [00:13:00] that we use as a lawyer. And it’s one of the best skills, I think if you want to try to improve anything, Improve your listening skill.
It’s going to help you not only being a lawyer, but being a person as well. But we have to listen so keenly in a deposition, right? We have to listen so keenly when it comes to jury selection and what they’re saying and when to talk and we not to talk, how to process all that information. So listening super helpful folks groups, what do you get Better listening skills for sure.
All right, let me just take a small pause to give a note of caution. One of the biggest things people come to me and ask, I want a focus group, Elizabeth, to find out the case value. I want them to tell me what my verdict is going to be. And I always throw up a really big red flag and I’m trying to tell them like, that’s, that’s really difficult.
It’s not something I would rely on and it’s just going to give [00:14:00] you a very broad brush at it because again, this is a focus group. These people know that they’re not the jury. They know that they’re there for three hours and they’re going to leave after I use the PayPal and pay them. They’re going to leave, forget all about this.
There’s no pressure or oath that they take. So at the end of the day, that money thing can be just like Monopoly money. I try to persuade people away from that and more into kind of things we just talked about. Witness credibility, evaluating the evidence, looking at case theory, looking at the knowledge base, testing out defense theory.
That may get you a lot more than just trying to have this one target of give me the case value. So, big note of caution there. Really lots of other great ways to use focus groups. I would put that way down the bottom and I would caution if you don’t have a lot of experience doing focus groups, moderating, looking at it, analyzing the data, I just caution you just against it.
There’s so many other great ways to use it. Just. Come back [00:15:00] over here. Come over here. And we can talk about later on in a different episode kind of this caution and where this comes from and what my experience is and what I would suggest you do if you are absolutely set on finding out some numbers. We can talk about that.
So let’s just take a moment to recap a little bit about what do you get. We talked about getting results, the yes or the no, who wins, who loses, getting information on witness credibility, testing case theory, getting some clarity on witnesses, getting clarity on pieces of evidence, timelines, photographs, learning whether we should file or not file.
Is this a case? Is this not a case? And then also practicing, honing those skills and becoming much more clear on what the case is about, because that’s one of the biggest things in any of these. that I’ve talked about other than I think knowledge based might be a little bit harder, but you’re gonna get [00:16:00] summaries.
They’re just going to regurgitate information back to you. It may be like, oh man, that’s a lot clearer way of saying things. That would be one thing that you get. And that’s kind of where that moves me into my double dipping phase. This is where you can really work. nerd out on the information. That’s what I like to do.
I think that’s what you should do. If you’re going to run a focus group, great. In that moment, you’re going to get all kinds of feedback, but your brain can’t process all of it at the same time. So get it transcribed. Transcribe that video. and read that transcript again. You would be so amazed at all the things that maybe you didn’t catch because, again, you’re trying to focus on what one person is saying, or maybe you’re just trying to gather on yes no’s, or high points, and just writing things down that you hear.
You will learn so much more if you take that, transcribe it, and read it. And really helpful tip, use an online transcriber. Upload that video. They’ll [00:17:00] transcribe it. Don’t burden somebody in your office with it. Please don’t burden yourself with that. They’ll get it done fast, quickly, efficient, and cost effective as well.
So reading it, you’re going to get a whole other level of analysis. You’re also going to look at it and reading and seeing the language they use. One of the things I mentioned earlier, which was summaries. How are they summarizing this? you. What are they saying? What are they not saying? And a lot of times we get in there, we listened to it live and we don’t hear something at all.
Or we completely mishear it. You know, in our little ears, we hear something like, Oh, and then you read the transcript and like, oh, that’s not what they said. I totally missed that point. So it can also help correct some of your excitement if you hear something wrong. Another way to double dip is to kind of take all this information.
So let’s say you run. It’s a lot of data information. Let’s gather all that into one place. And I’m talking about the people information, that demographics, their age, [00:18:00] education, married, not married, kids, no kids. Are you seeing any patterns or any trends? Are people who are for you, people who are against you, people who are neutral, right?
Can you see anything? If you see anything at all, how come? Like, was there something specific about that focus group? Was there something specific about a piece of evidence that they got there? Right, this is just kind of getting into those weeds and is there anything else I can see here one more time if I’m looking at the demographics?
That’s going to help you if you’ve got to go pick a jury. It’s going to be kind of an outlier. I don’t want you to think like, Oh, let’s be saying like, this is it. I can perfectly craft this. Well, no, but it’s definitely going to help you along. If you’ve got six or seven or 13 focus groups and you can look at all the demographics and also keeping in mind focus group styles and all that, you’re going to be able to see some trends and patterns.
And that’s going to really help you when you get into doing jury selection, right? Versus going cold and blank and not even knowing at [00:19:00] all, What? So, we can use this information, this feedback to the full extent by getting it transcribed, reading it, then also gathering it all up and putting it in front of you to see if there are any trends or any patterns.
If you see something, dig again. Like, what’s the cause there? Was it something that this personally, this person, like experienced, uh, that made them super hot to try, like totally your best juror ever? Okay. Great. But maybe that was that person’s personal experience. Nothing that you said would have convinced them of that.
And that’s kind of where it’s like, okay, if we see a trend, let’s dig a little deeper and make sure like where maybe it have come from on a deep level. Let’s circle back to our original topic, which is focus groups. What do I get? We talked about results. ways to clarify, remove confusion from pieces of evidence, witness credibility, confidence, right?
[00:20:00] Practicing those skills, gaining that comfort, that speaking, listening, receiving responses. How do we manage that when we’re up in front of people? Do I file? Do I not file? Is this anything? Is this a lawsuit? And ultimately, what do they know? What’s this knowledge base on this topic, this subject, maybe this process?
Basically, you can get a lot from focus groups, and that’s what I would totally encourage you to wrap your mind around. It’s not just results oriented. You can learn so much more. You can spend three hours, you can spend one hour, you can spend 30 minutes, you can spend six hours. All of it is going to be about the depth with which you are willing to go into the material and the depth of the feedback.
So, we’ve gathered all this up, now we’re going to talk about in future episodes how, how to get it using focus groups, and we’ll probably break that down into different segments so that we can make it into [00:21:00] bite size information and also with some forms and some templates to help you guys along the way.
Well, thank you so much for joining me today. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love if you could share it with somebody you know. Also, you can subscribe, follow on your favorite podcast app, review, rate it, share it with a friend. And until next time, thanks so much.
