After almost 46 years and approaching 200 trials, I can tell you exactly when most cases are won or lost: before either lawyer says a word in opening statement. It happens during jury selection, in the fifteen or twenty minutes most attorneys treat as a formality. I do not treat it this way, and the data proves me right.
Paper is more honest than people.
Ask a panel of forty strangers in open court whether they could set aside a grudge against insurance companies, or large employers, or plaintiffs’ lawyers, and most will say the right thing. Hand those same people a written supplemental juror questionnaire and ask privately, and you get different answers. You see fewer face-saving non-answers and more candor about the biases that actually decide verdicts. It is why I push for a written questionnaire in every case where the court will allow one. People will write down what they will not say out loud in front of a judge and thirty-nine strangers.
Build the profile, don’t guess it.
Early in my career I selected jurors on instinct, like most trial lawyers. I do not do that now. A mock trial, a real run-through of voir dire, openings, and closings in front of a stand-in panel, tells me which arguments land and which jurors are quietly hostile before I spend my actual strikes finding out the hard way. It costs time and money, but it costs far less than discovering mid-trial that your strongest juror on paper despises your client.
“Voir Google” has rules.
Many lawyers research jurors online now. That is not controversial. What is controversial is how. You can review a juror’s public social media. You cannot let a juror find out you did, and in plenty of jurisdictions even a passive LinkedIn “someone viewed your profile” notification counts as improper ex parte contact. Know your court’s rule before you click, not after.
AI juror analytics are a lead, not a verdict.
A new generation of vendors will sell you an AI-generated risk score on every name on your panel. I look at these the same way I look at a paralegal’s first-pass research memo: useful, not final. The tools scale public-records and social-media profiling in ways no human team can match, but they also import real risk — privacy exposure and Batson-adjacent discrimination concerns chief among them. Treat the printout as a starting point for your own questioning, never as a substitute for watching a juror’s face when you ask the hard question yourself.
None of this replaces what you actually learn standing in front of twelve strangers and deciding, in real time, who’s telling you the truth. The tools are better. The job is still the same.
If you’re heading into a trial and want a second, experienced set of eyes on your jury selection strategy — or you’re evaluating a case that’s headed toward a jury — call me (714) 673-6500 or visit juryattorney.com/contact-us/ to schedule a consultation.
