Everyone is biased, but which biases held by potential jurors help or hurt your case? Trial Science systems help you bore in on those helpful and harmful attitudes during voir dire.

Using the demographic and attitudinal information collected during focus groups and mock trials, and correlating that with how the research participants voted, we are able to create a jury profile for voir dire based on science, not hunches.

The voir dire questions you will ask are designed to uncover damaging biases and to give judges a reason to excuse your worst potential jurors for cause. Those jurors who are left then become the targets for pre-emptory challenges.

Smiles, body language, grimaces, and even voir dire answers themselves are not as telling about attitudes as are the data.

Your history of interviewing jurors and our system of scoring jurors, blend together into the answers you need for deciding on challenges.

Supplemental Juror Questionnaires

When Supplemental Jury Questionnaires (SJQ’s) are allowed, the demographic data and the attitudes expressed during focus groups and mock trials, provide the keys to designing and analyzing pointed questions in relation to the issues of your case.

A thoughtfully-constructed SJQ will tap into the discriminating attitudes and demographics of those jurors which becomes extremely valuable in conducting highly effective and focused voir dire.

Due to the additional information obtained from the questionnaire, relevant follow up questions for voir dire are likely to present themselves.

Supplemental Jury Questionnaires allow jurors to say things “in private” that they might not say out loud in front of strangers.

Proper challenges for cause arise 4 times more often when jurors fill out questionnaires than they do in open court. Our pre-trial research will tell you which questions are important for a questionnaire. Voir dire then becomes a laser-like event, probing deeper into potentially dangerous attitudes expressed on the survey. Trends go back and forth on judges approving the use of questionnaires, but they do tend to make the process more efficient and accurate.

Ask us about sample motions for the Court when you are attempting to get approval for your SJQ.