No Such Thing as a Good or Bad Juror, with Harry Plotkin
Episode Summary
Don’t ask prospective jurors if they hate lawsuits; you won’t learn anything about them. Don’t talk about damages early on; you’ll only rub them the wrong way. And don’t make rules like, “I never have ‘X’ on a jury”; you could waste a peremptory strike on a potentially great juror.
Renowned jury consultant Harry Plotkin, of Your Next Jury, has seen plaintiffs’ lawyers make these mistakes and others through over two decades of mastering the art of jury selection. In this conversation with host Brendan Lupetin, Harry offers solutions and insights on everything from an effective opening to the pitfalls of choosing jurors based on factors like gender, age, ethnicity, or jobs.
Harry and leading trial lawyer Dan Kramer are co-hosting a new podcast, “Picking Justice.” Tune in on Amazon Music, Apple, Audible, iHeartRadio, Pandora, PocketCasts, and Spotify.
Episode Preview
- Harry’s path to being a jury consultant began more than two decades ago with his background in psychology.
- Why Harry focuses on personal injury, employment, and product cases: “I do love doing victim-related cases and getting justice for the small guy.”
- Harry has seen lawyers make many mistakes over the years, but this one is the most common. It starts with “I have this rule…”
- Why Harry doesn’t like any opening that starts with “This case is about …” and the style he prefers instead.
- When to talk about damages and harms? At the end. Harry explains why.
- The significance of asking the jury to hold a defendant “fully accountable.”
- Harry’s strategy with mini-openings: Suck out all the good facts, leave jurors with the bad ones. Give generalities, and your jurors will be hyperfocused on them.
- When a child is involved, the plaintiff’s lawyer should lean not on sympathy but instead ask jurors to use their judgment, Harry suggests.
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