Yearly Archives: 2016

Keys to an Effective Voir Dire

As law students learn from their textbooks, “voir dire” comes from Old French and means “to speak the truth.” And as they learn from courses and colleagues, the point of voir dire is to find out if prospective jurors harbor a fixed bias against one’s client. Those notions are incredibly consistent with what we, as trial consultants, are trying to achieve. However, once in practice, attorneys are often taught that jury selection is a great time to begin “priming” jurors to their case. And fears about “poisoning the panel” creep in and make attorneys hesitant to actually allow jurors to speak the truth. Both of these practices—while common—tend to inhibit the usefulness of voir dire.

In our ideal jury selection, 1) attorneys focus less on argument and more on listening to the jurors and 2) jurors are encouraged to speak freely even—in fact, especially—if their opinions are counter to our case. To the first point, we understand the fear of waiting to argue your case—and agree that there is some vital information you should impart during voir dire. But the primary voir dire goal should always be collecting information rather than providing it. When faced with presenting potential jurors with the best parts of your case or getting reactions to the worst parts, the latter is much more valuable.

It is a difficult mental shift to incorporate a few case themes into voir dire questions while leaving the remaining arguments for openings. And it is even more difficult, we grant, to be comfortable with encouraging jurors to speak freely. Almost instinctively, attorneys want to stop—and correct—jurors who express negative opinions about their client or case. In fact, voir dire questions are often designed to force an agreement: “Don’t you think that…?” Or, when a juror begins to express a contrary opinion, they are interrupted and corrected: “But wouldn’t you agree that…?”

Some negative opinions do need to be handled privately, such as extreme, case-specific opinions (“My mom took that drug and has never been the same”). But it is vitally important to allow—and even encourage—jurors to express general, negative opinions about your case or client (“I don’t think drug companies care about people; I think they hide the dangers of drugs”). By expressing those opinions, jurors are not only identifying themselves as receptive to your opponent, but they are providing the opportunity to identify other jurors who share their views, but who would not have spoken up on their own (“Mrs. X believes that drug companies don’t care about safety—only money. Are there others who feel that way?”).

We recognize that allowing such public expressions of negative opinions about your case can be frightening. In fact, many attorneys have been taught that doing so is tantamount to endorsing the opposing themes or allowing jurors to “contaminate the panel.” But jurors’ opinions and belief systems are built on a lifetime of experiences and are therefore, deeply entrenched. They are extremely unlikely to be influenced or swayed by comments from other jurors during voir dire—or by a few weeks of argument during trial. This mental rigidity makes it imperative that opposing jurors feel comfortable enough during voir dire to identify themselves, so they can be removed.

There’s an oft-repeated adage that trials are won in jury selection. Although we believe that it takes a lot more than a great jury selection to be successful at trial, trials can definitely be lost during jury selection. Voir dire provides your one chance to listen to jurors before the verdict. And if they have negative opinions or beliefs about your client, it’s much better to hear those opinions during jury selection than when the verdict is read.

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Tracey Carpenter, Ph.D. and Susan Chiasson, Ph.D. started Carpenter Trial Consulting in 2010. They each have extensive experience in high-stakes civil litigation and specialized expertise in how jurors analyze evidence, assess witnesses, and arrive at verdict decisions.

Fighting The Battle in Front of You

Anyone with extensive trial experience understands the value of calling on that experience when entering into a new litigation or trying a new case. Good attorneys see patterns and commonalities across cases and recognize the benefits those patterns provide. Seeing patterns allows an attorney to quickly assess a new case, to figure out a good place to start researching, and to identify issues that are likely to be problematic. Because such experience eliminates the need to reinvent the wheel for each case that comes along, it’s not surprising that both attorneys and trial consultants often draw comparisons between the current litigation and past litigations. And while those comparisons are largely beneficial, they also contain pitfalls.

Unfortunately, such extensive experience can cause you to close your mind too early on a case. By assuming that this case will fit into the same pattern as previous, similar cases, you can miss vital differences—some of which can completely change the trajectory of the case. Overlooking those differences—the unique challenges present in this case—can leave you blindsided by how differently jurors react to it than they have to cases you have tried before. But how can attorneys and trial consultants keep their minds open? How can you manage to look at a case with fresh eyes when you can’t un-know what you know?

A method that we find useful is contemplating this story: A fire chief with decades of experience tells an interviewer: “The next fire I walk into, I won’t know anything.” Surprised, the interviewer pointed out his position as fire chief and his decades of experience. But the chief explains: “When I arrive on scene with that mind-set, I glean more new, specific information from others. By affirming uncertainty, I get more people to own what they see and to communicate it. Because while we have all seen a lot of fires, none of us has ever seen this fire.”

Adopting the mantra, “I’ve never seen this fire before” reminds us that each case—with all of it nuances and concrete details—strikes jurors differently. Cases may have commonalities but nonetheless, the themes and arguments that worked in the past will not necessarily work here. The jurors who responded so favorably to you before may not be the jurors you want now. Different hot button issues will be present and different emotions will be evoked. Being mindful of those things allows us to balance our previous experiences and successes with discovering what makes this case different. And those differences must be investigated in order to find the optimal strategy for this litigation.

So while it’s wise to remember the lessons you’ve learned from the past, it’s also important to remember that each new case/litigation is its own fire—with its own flashpoints, its own patterns, and its own dangers. And the best way to be successful in this case, is to make sure you aren’t still trying the last case.

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Tracey Carpenter, Ph.D. and Susan Chiasson, Ph.D. started Carpenter Trial Consulting in 2010. They each have extensive experience in high-stakes civil litigation and specialized expertise in how jurors analyze evidence, assess witnesses, and arrive at verdict decisions.

Know Your Opponent’s Strengths

During trial preparation, it is easy, and tempting, to hone in on the weaknesses in your opponent’s case and discount their strengths. Easy, because the weaknesses often highlight themselves and tempting, because developing arguments to expose such weaknesses comes quickly to experienced trial lawyers. While we would absolutely encourage you to capitalize on those weaknesses, we would also recommend 1) garnering feedback from multiple perspectives to develop a detailed understanding of the opposing cases’ strengths and 2) focusing the majority of your trial preparation on analyzing and responding to those strengths.

In spite of the intense satisfaction that comes with unequivocally proving an adversary wrong, dismantling their weak arguments may not be enough to discredit their strong arguments. Oftentimes, cases are assessed using a formulaic approach—which tends to conceive of trials as a set of building blocks that will collapse if you knock out some of the blocks. Unfortunately, juror decision-making isn’t that regimented or linear. Instead, we would recommend an approach similar to that of a football team scouting out their rival or a boxer preparing for a specific opponent. In both cases, exploiting their opponents’ weaknesses is only a part of the plan. They recognize that the key to victory is appreciating and preparing for their opponent’s strengths.

Because our belief systems and perspectives seem so right to us, it can make it difficult to appreciate that a rational person, upon hearing our explanation of the facts, could draw a different conclusion. And since we tend to surround ourselves with people who share our perspectives, it is not unusual for us to work with trial teams where almost every member shares a specific view on the case. In those circumstances, it is extremely common for different perspectives—whether that’s from a trial consultant, other members of trial team, or mock jurors—to be dismissed or attributed to a lack of a full understanding of the facts.

We would encourage you to intentionally resist that type of “groupthink.” Much in the same way that football teams have practice squads that mimic the strengths of the opposing team and boxers enlist sparring partners who are strong in the same areas as their opponent, we would suggest surrounding yourself with people who have different—and conflicting—perspectives as you prepare for trial. While this structure does force you to confront the hard truths associated with your case, it allows you to hear them from a team member prior to trial, rather than from a juror after the trial.

One of the most valuable things you can do during trial preparation is to create an environment where an appreciation for the opposing arguments is welcomed and encouraged—not dismissed or frowned upon. So seek out trial consultants who will point out strong aspects of the opposing case. Encourage that type of thinking in your trial team. And be receptive to it when you hear it from mock jurors. They aren’t simply playing devil’s advocate, not being a team player, or misunderstanding the facts. They’re giving you a scouting report—and in turn, you’ll be prepared for whatever is coming.

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Tracey Carpenter, Ph.D. and Susan Chiasson, Ph.D. started Carpenter Trial Consulting in 2010. They each have extensive experience in high-stakes civil litigation and specialized expertise in how jurors analyze evidence, assess witnesses, and arrive at verdict d

What were those jurors thinking? Ask them.

Are there jurors you believe are always risky picks? Is there a strategy you used before, but now avoid? Attorneys often tell us about a type of juror they’ve been burned by or a strategy they used that jurors hated, but in most cases, those conclusions are based on the results of the trial—and on their feelings of uncertainty surrounding that juror or strategy. Rather than guessing about what went wrong or assuming you know which jurors were for/against you, we would recommend going straight to the source—the jurors. Although some judges balk at juror interviews, we would argue that their value makes it an issue that is well worth raising.

Making assumptions about jurors, strategies, and witnesses happens naturally and understandably. When you are trying a case, you view every aspect of that case—the jurors you want, how the case should be presented, how the evidence comes in—through the prism of your life and trial experiences. And when a verdict is reached, it is impossible to remove the filter borne of those experiences, including any doubts and uncertainties, when trying to decipher the verdict. So it’s easy to attribute a loss to that witness you were unsure about or a win to that juror you loved. But those attributions—while deeply held—may be completely inaccurate.

Unfortunately, such inaccurate attributions don’t simply color how you view cases in the past. They become integrated into your “trial filter” and begin to inform future trial decisions. As you try more cases, your speculative post-trial analyses start to have a cumulative effect: there is an ever-growing list of jurors you don’t trust, strategies you reject, and arguments you avoid. But there is no assurance that your trial choices are based on accurate information. Should all elementary school teachers really be avoided? Or was there something about that teacher’s life experience that made her resistant to your arguments? Did jurors really hate that witness you were so unsure about? Or did the case turn on a piece of evidence that you thought was insignificant?

Post-Trial Interviews answer those questions. They allow us to draw accurate conclusions about what went right/wrong and make sound adjustments to our strategy. And we have never done Post-Trial Interviews where we did not learn something unexpected and valuable. They provide insight into (1) what actually influenced the jury’s verdict, (2) how many/which jurors were receptive to your arguments, and (3) the tenor and dynamics of the deliberations. This is obviously helpful information if the trial team lost, but even with a win, you may find out that jurors responded to evidence you discounted and ignored evidence you were sure would sway them.

Post-Trial Interviews often inform your future trial techniques in more global ways as well. It is not uncommon to find out information about jurors that you would have loved to know during jury selection—which can lead to changes in how you phrase, order, and ask voir dire questions. And regularly, attorneys are surprised and irritated to learn that jurors seem to have no recollection or an improper recollection of the jury instructions that they were hanging their case on. Such juror revelations can lead to a better understanding of how jurors analyze and process information and what legal arguments they do/do not find meaningful.

It is natural to want to avoid things that have not worked for you in the past. But that inclination is only helpful if you are avoiding those things based on accurate information. So talk to that elementary school teacher before you decide that you find teachers risky as jurors. She may have been terrible for you…or she may have been the one person who kept damages in check.

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Tracey Carpenter, Ph.D. and Susan Chiasson, Ph.D. started Carpenter Trial Consulting in 2010. They each have extensive experience in high-stakes civil litigation and specialized expertise in how jurors analyze evidence, assess witnesses, and arrive at verdict decisions.

Be willing to lose the mock to win the trial.

Mock trials are often a key part of preparation for trial. Although mocks can never exactly replicate a trial, they do provide valuable information about themes, arguments, and key pieces of evidence and witness testimony. The goal of any mock trial should be to learn as much as possible – both about your case and about the opposing case. And the stronger the opposingcase presentation, the more you will learn.

Carpenter Trial Consulting: Expert Consultants, Expert Advice

Carpenter Trial Consulting: Expert Consultants, Expert Advice

But we’ve found that trial attorneys, accustomed to a “if you win, I lose” context, are better able to embrace this concept in theory than in practice. Over time, they become invested in their position and their arguments. And knowing their client is going to be watching and judging their performance produces, understandably, a desire to win. We’ve seen that desire manifest itself in many ways, both subtle and obvious.

Whether it’s assigning the opposing case to more junior, inexperienced attorneys, stacking the deck by excluding inflammatory evidence, or presenting evidence or arguments that would not be allowed at trial (or in some cases, aren’t even true), shifting the balance of the mock in their favor may boost an attorney’s confidence and performance in the mock trial, but it will reduce the amount of valuable information gleaned from participants. Even more concerning, it can give the client false expectations about the hurdles awaiting them at trial.

Ideally, the mock trial is approached like an experiment where we test the worst-case scenario, give the other side the strongest, best-case representation, and see how jurors evaluate the case. And the results will be gleaned not just from how jurors vote, but from what they say: What arguments did they adopt/reject? What arguments did they generate on their own? What arguments stirred emotions? Which points did jurors really dig in on? What were they confused by? This information is what guides changes to themes and strategies, and ultimately, influences trial outcomes.

When approached correctly, mock trials can add enormous value. But realizing that value requires the following:

-Attorneys must be able to adopt an experimental, not a performative, mindset. They have to be willing to face losing the mock.

-Attorneys must trust the trial consultant designing and assisting with the mock trial to educate and remind the client that a trial team that loses a balanced mock is providing more value than a trial team that stacks the deck and wins the mock.

In short, learning to fail in a mock always beats failing to learn in a mock.

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Tracey Carpenter, Ph.D. and Susan Chiasson, Ph.D. started Carpenter Trial Consulting in 2010. They each have extensive experience in high-stakes civil litigation and specialized expertise in how jurors analyze evidence, assess witnesses, and arrive at verdict decisions.

 

Let your witnesses guide your themes…not vice versa.

As trial teams prepare for court, theme development is usually an early focus while witness preparation comes much later. And while attorneys typically approach these tasks separately, witnesses are expected to support the developed themes at trial. But often witnesses aren’t comfortable with the themes, and don’t believe the themes tell their story. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for us to spend many hours in strategy meetings with attorneys regarding case themes, only to find out when we begin meeting with the witnesses that their stories are inconsistent with the themes the trial attorneys have already constructed.

Preparing for trial in that order—first themes, then witnesses—creates a witness/theme dynamic that can play out in one of three ways at trial, only one of them optimal:

-In really rare cases, the witnesses are completely attuned to the themes that have already been prepared and can wholeheartedly support them.

-In rare cases, the themes are presented as the attorney desires and the testimony as the witness desires. This uncoordinated approach confuses jurors and is not likely to be successful.

-More often, the attorney emphasizes his/her themes and only questions the witnesses about the portion of the story that is consistent with those themes. The witnesses are absolutely testifying truthfully—and have never been asked not to—but their discomfort with not being able to tell their full story shows. Because they feel boxed in to an incomplete story, they come across as less credible than they otherwise would, and are not as effective as they could be.

Our solution to this friction: Meet with your witnesses first and let the witnesses guide the themes.

In our experience, even good witnesses will not be effective if 1) they don’t feel heard by the company and the trial team, and 2) if they don’t feel completely comfortable with the themes they are endorsing. If your witness is expected to carry the case, the themes have to make sense to them and be consistent with their story. If they aren’t comfortable with the themes, then the witness won’t present well, even if they have the potential to be a great witness.

So, talk to your witnesses. Let them tell their story. And when you have a full understanding of what their story is, let your themes naturally develop from that. We acknowledge that preparing a case in this order requires more effort than the traditional way, but the result will be a higher level of comfort for the witness when testifying and an overall stronger case. Because a comfortable witness is a persuasive witness.

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Tracey Carpenter, Ph.D. and Susan Chiasson, Ph.D. started Carpenter Trial Consulting in 2010. They each have extensive experience in high-stakes civil litigation and specialized expertise in how jurors analyze evidence, assess witnesses, and arrive at verdict decisions.

Do NOT take that silence as agreement.

There are a few phrases that we hear frequently in jury selections—regardless of venue and across attorneys—but one phrase that we hear more than most is, “I will take your silence as agreement.” We say: Don’t. In most cases, silent jurors aren’t expressing agreement—or anything else. Their silence is simply silence and provides the attorney with no reliable information. Here, we examine how jurors view such “agreements” and offer a more dependable approach for gaining commitments from jurors.

We hear this phrase most often when an attorney is asking questions to the entire panel and the panel is not particularly talkative. The attorney asks a broad question: “Does everyone agree [to base your verdict on the evidence and not sympathy, e.g.]?” No one on the panel responds and there’s an uncomfortable silence. The attorney then says, “I will take your silence as agreement,” and continues on. While we imagine that this is done for a variety of reasons—as a transition statement, as a method of dealing with an awkward situation, or maybe due to a genuine belief that jurors are agreeing by not responding—we have learned, from research and bitter experience, that those jurors do not believe they have entered into any agreements under those circumstances and definitely do not feel bound by that “agreement.” In fact, it often causes internal pushback from jurors (“You may take it however you want, but I did not agree to that.”).

What can you do to avoid that trap? Given that you want a real connection with and genuine agreement from jurors, we recommend that you revise your voir dire strategy and ask focused questions of individual jurors. Let’s take the example of “zero damages.” The question, “Can everyone award zero damages?” is often followed by complete silence. Rather than starting with that general question and assuming that you have garnered an implicit agreement on the issue, we recommend trying this approach instead:

-First, elicit an explicit agreement from several individual jurors, with a more detailed question: “Ms. Jones, if the evidence warranted zero damages, is that something you believe you could award? Even though she’s a nice lady, could you send the plaintiff home with nothing?”, followed by, “What about you, Mr. Pearson, could you award her no money?”.

-Once you have an actual agreement from some jurors, then pose a more general, but also focused question to the remaining jurors: “Is there anyone who feels uncomfortable with that? Does the thought of that make anyone think, ‘I’m not sure I could do that?’” These responses, even if they are silent responses, are responses that jurors do perceive as an agreement.

Jurors are silent for many reasons—awkwardness, unfamiliarity with the court system, shyness—so any assumptions about what that silence means can alienate jurors, give you false confidence, and prevent you from digging deeper and learning valuable information about what jurors are actually thinking. Designing questions that prevent silence will always serve you better than accepting silence as a tacit agreement.

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Tracey Carpenter, Ph.D. and Susan Chiasson, Ph.D. started Carpenter Trial Consulting in 2010. They each have extensive experience in high-stakes civil litigation and specialized expertise in how jurors analyze evidence, assess witnesses, and arrive at verdict decisions.

 

Getting Jurors to Reveal Taboo Truths

A recent NY Times article examined the fact that Donald Trump polls better in online polls than in polls conducted with a live interviewer, most likely because embarrassment is preventing people from openly sharing their real opinions and preferences. Embarrassment about opinions that are generally perceived as socially undesirable, even taboo, is not confined to politics. We all know from experience that trials often involve some facets that jurors are reluctant to discuss openly and honestly in open court (or even in a written questionnaire). So what do you do when your case includes topics—racism, gender biases—that you know will influence how jurors perceive the case, but that jurors will not cop to in jury selection? Are you stuck with simply guessing which jurors you believe and which you don’t?

Thankfully, no. When confronted with identifying socially undesirable attitudes, it is tempting to default to familiar strategies: asking the question repeatedly in slightly different formats, imploring jurors to be honest in spite of their embarrassment, or instructing jurors that those attitudes are improper considerations when deciding the case. Unfortunately, jurors don’t decide which of their attitudes influence their decisions, nor do they have the ability to ignore specific attitudes when making those decisions.

However, most taboo attitudes co-exist with more socially acceptable attitudes, so identifying and questioning jurors about those attitudes allows them to reveal their biases without stigma or embarrassment. In cases where useful information is unlikely to be discovered using a direct path (“Do you have negative feelings about people of other races?”), there are indirect paths that can lead you to the same endpoint (“Have you ever experience reverse discrimination?” or “Do you believe that minorities are given special treatment that adversely affects you?”).

The key to a successful jury selection in such cases is identifying the indirect paths that are most closely related to the target belief system, and are therefore, predictive of that belief system. This requires an in-depth analysis of the interplay between juror beliefs and attitudes, which can be done relatively quickly and inexpensively using online surveys. Online surveys also provide the anonymity required to coax participants into revealing taboo beliefs—because in jury research, just as in jury selection, people reveal the most when they think they are revealing the least. And that is something we would encourage you to capitalize on.

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Tracey Carpenter, Ph.D. and Susan Chiasson, Ph.D. started Carpenter Trial Consulting in 2010. They each have extensive experience in high-stakes civil litigation and specialized expertise in how jurors analyze evidence, assess witnesses, and arrive at verdict decisions.

 

Know your jury.

In social science research, there’s something called the ecological fallacy—using data gathered at one level to infer attitudes or behavior at another level. Like using information about an aggregate of people to predict what one person will do. We often see this mistake made in discussions of jury selection and case presentation, usually involving assumptions about demographic categories (“Low-income people think this way”), or age cohorts (“Millennials are entitled”), and political parties (“Republicans lean defense, Democrats lean plaintiff”). But much the same way that you don’t fit all the norms and stereotypes for groups you belong to, neither do jurors.

This doesn’t mean that all information about groups as a whole is useless. But it does mean that in a trial preparation/jury selection context, it usefulness is very limited. For example, as Millennials are becoming a larger percentage of jurors, we are often asked how they should be approached. Our advice is to be mindful of their life experiences—don’t use pop culture references that are too dated for them to understand, consider their preference for shorter, pithier presentations, and don’t make self-deprecatory remarks about how hard technology is to master. Having said that, many Boomers and Gen-X’ers have mastered new technology (computers, iPhones, social media, Hulu, etc.) and what juror wouldn’t prefer a more succinct presentation?

When we become aware of how group characteristics are used in other arenas – advertising, political consulting—it can be quite tempting to try to apply those findings to your trial practice. And as we mentioned above, there are some limited ways where that information can be useful. However, what you have available that those mediums don’t is the unique ability to know exactly who you are presenting to. Rather than selling something to the masses or trying to persuade a huge crowd, you are presenting a clear, comprehensible, and persuasive case about a complex event to a small group of people. And you are afforded the opportunity to know important information about each member of that group.

So if you’re going to rely on an advertising adage, please choose this one: Know your audience. Advertisers and political consultants use group characteristics when they craft appeals for selling something—the Millennials feel the Bern, Subaru owners Feel the Love—because they have to. If, instead of trying to reach millions of people at once, they were tasked with selling to 12 known individuals, they would shift strategies dramatically. Instead of relying on assumptions about a group, they would gather information about each individual and craft their presentations accordingly. And that is exactly what we would recommend to you. Don’t make assumptions about individual jurors based on group membership. Ask them about the case. And then listen to what they say.

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Tracey Carpenter, Ph.D. and Susan Chiasson, Ph.D. started Carpenter Trial Consulting in 2010. They each have extensive experience in high-stakes civil litigation and specialized expertise in how jurors analyze evidence, assess witnesses, and arrive at verdict decisions.

 

Am I pushing your buttons?

In most product liability trials, the plaintiff’s goal is to keep the focus squarely on the behavior of the defendant. They want to characterize that behavior as “bad” and try to elicit strong emotions, typically fear and anger, from jurors. Unfortunately, our clients have often given them something to work with, even if it’s only tangentially related to the case. A seasoned trial attorney can usually identify what will be an issue ahead of time – those unfortunately worded marketing documents, that insensitive email – and craft a response. Still, despite your best efforts, you may find yourself in court answering for bad conduct and trying to calm the rage that plaintiff’s are trying to ignite.

To complicate the matter further, sometimes there are hot buttons that you don’t know exist until you push them. In a comment analysis we conducted on a vaccine article, the second most discussed issue – after vaccines – was raw milk. In the original article, the author made a passing remark casting doubt on the safety of raw milk and that comment unexpectedly hit a nerve with many readers and altered the course of the discussions. As anyone who has watched mock jury deliberations can attest, this happens quite frequently with jurors, and can be unnerving.

Identifying the hot button issues in your case prior to trial is imperative. But it is not enough. In order to develop an effective trial strategy, you must understand why it is a button. What emotions is it evoking? Why are jurors so sensitive to this issue? This deeper understanding is essential for two reasons:

1) So you can disarm the button. If you do not understand why the information is triggering such a strong reaction, you cannot address it in a way that does not offend jurors or appear to be minimizing the behavior. The response to the bad behavior has to be sensitive to jurors’ concerns and address the specific cause of those concerns. For example, if a young, female employee testifies that she flagged a problem, but the company did not take action, it is easy to focus entirely on the missed warning and craft a response that is solely directed at disarming that button. What that response is likely to miss, however, is the underlying button that aggravates many jurors – Was she ignored because she is young? Because she is a woman?

2) So you can choose the best jury. With any hot button issue, jurors will fall into one of three categories: not emotionally triggered by the issue; emotionally triggered, but able to be receptive to the right argument; and too triggered to be persuaded by any argument. Only a thorough understanding of the buttons imbedded in your case will allow you to tell the difference.

So even in cases with plenty of interesting and titillating facts to distract jurors from where you would like them to focus, there is still reason to hope. As long as you properly identify and address what is stoking juror reactions, there are jurors who can quiet their emotions and respond reasonably to your case.

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Tracey Carpenter, Ph.D. and Susan Chiasson, Ph.D. started Carpenter Trial Consulting in 2010. They each have extensive experience in high-stakes civil litigation and specialized expertise in how jurors analyze evidence, assess witnesses, and arrive at verdict decisions.

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