![\"outside-in\"](\"http:\/\/www2.law.temple.edu\/aer\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/outside-in-225x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\nUntil reading JURY TRIALS: OUTSIDE IN (NITA, 2016) by psychologist Melissa Gomez, I was more than skeptical regarding the value of jury consultants.\u00a0 And I was not alone.\u00a0 As of 2005, \u201c[a]lthough jury consultants claim high success rates, little research ha[d] been conducted on the actual effect jury consultants have in the outcome of a case.\u201d\u00a0 COMMENT: A Jury of Your Peers?: How Jury Consulting May Actually Help Trial Lawyers Resolve Constitutional Limitations Imposed on the Selection of Juries, 41 Cal. W. L. Rev. 479, 492 (2005).<\/p>\n
The opinion has not improved much over time.\u00a0 As one author noted in 2015, \u201c[s]tudies have shown that while most consultants tout the success of scientific jury selection, the consultants often underestimate the force of the evidence in that particular case.\u201d\u00a0 Allen, The Jury: Modern Day Investigation and Consultation, 34 Rev. Litig. 529, 540 (2015).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But this book was published by NITA, so I thought it deserved a glance.\u00a0 And the glance turned into a page-turning read because author Melissa Gomez, holder of a Ph.D. in psychology and a Masters degree in education, uses science<\/em> as the foundation of her writing.\u00a0 And that makes this small book a gem, cataloging technique after technique, and insight after insight.<\/p>\n I asked Dr. Gomez to discuss the book, and here are her thoughts:<\/p>\n Why I wrote this book is an interesting question. Aside from simply being a glutton for punishment, I saw a need that I believed I could fill. I work on all kinds of litigation, and there are common themes that cut across cases that are civil, criminal, plaintiff\/prosecution, defense, commercial, personal injury, patent\u2026you name it. The need I saw was that attorneys have a hard time stepping outside of the weeds of their cases and their own perspective. They see their cases from inside out.\u00a0 My job is to hold up a mirror so they can see the case from outside in\u2014as other people may see it differently. <\/em><\/p>\n As a psychologist, I work with lawyers on the educational, social and emotional issues involved in the litigation.\u00a0 There is learning involved in trials. There are interpersonal interactions involved in trials. There is stress involved in trials. This is all because there are people involved in trials. <\/em><\/p>\n Lawyers spend years learning about the law. I help them understand that, while the law needs to be the basis of the trial for the court and the record, the psychology of the people is what creates the story. <\/em><\/p>\n If I had to narrow down the three key things that lawyers need to keep in mind for trials it would be:<\/em><\/p>\n 1)<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>In order to advocate, you need to know how to educate. There are some basic learning principles that we need to consider and implement into our trial strategy. Understanding and implementing phenomena like primacy and recency (people remember most what they hear first and last) and Miller\u2019s Law (short term memory can retain up to about seven items) can shape the way a trial is organized and categorized so learning and retention is optimized.<\/em><\/p>\n 2)<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>Jurors see things in big picture images. While the evidence is important, the big picture image that is presented on your side of the courtroom it the mortar to that evidence. We must look at what we are communicating between the lines on the trial transcript. That is where jurors often find what they see as the real story. <\/em><\/p>\n 3)<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>There is more psychology involved in trials than just that of the jurors\u2019. We too often focus just on juror psychology and background and not enough on that of our witnesses, clients and selves. We must try to understand our witnesses on a human level so that we can help them learn to communicate in the foreign context of the courtroom.\u00a0 We must look inward to ourselves to determine why we do what we do and whether what we do is best for our case and our client.<\/em><\/p>\n Gomez\u2019 advice goes well beyond these general principles.\u00a0 Illustrative of her insights is the book\u2019s discussion of fighting liability even in a losing case as a strategy to reduce<\/em> the ultimate damages award.\u00a0 This is counter-intuitive \u2013 after all, shouldn\u2019t the jury treat a defendant more leniently on damages after that party accepts responsibility?\u00a0 But Gomez offers a new, and compelling perspective:<\/p>\n When liability is contested\u2026jurors are forced to discuss the defendant by addressing the liability evidence.\u00a0 They become more aware of the defendant\u2019s perspective and, as a result, feel empathetic toward the defendant, even knowing that the defendant did something wrong<\/em>.<\/p>\n These words have particular resonance to me as they parallel experiences in criminal law. In the capital case context, it seems that jurors are less likely<\/em> to vote for a sentence of death if the defense contested guilt than when the defendant just pleads guilty to murder and the entire case devolves into a fight over the appropriate sentence.\u00a0 There, the rationale is that the jurors punished already by returning a guilty verdict, so they can have a sense that their job was done and done well even when they then vote for the lesser [but severe] punishment of life.<\/p>\n So, looking outside in<\/em> has great value for attorneys.\u00a0 And so does this jury consultant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Until reading JURY TRIALS: OUTSIDE IN (NITA, 2016) by psychologist Melissa Gomez, I was more than skeptical regarding the value of jury consultants.\u00a0 And I was not alone.\u00a0 As of 2005, \u201c[a]lthough jury consultants claim high success rates, little research ha[d] been conducted on the actual effect jury consultants have in the outcome of a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,11],"tags":[],"coauthors":[238],"class_list":["post-1787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advocacy","category-advocacy-and-evidence-blog","category-trial-advocacy"],"yoast_head":"\n