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The sad thing was they weren't even particularly good lawyer jokes. Stuff like this:From the moment of birth, sharks' skin is tough and rough — covered with thousands of tiny hard teeth call denticles that abrade any passerby made of softer stuff. Lawyers are also thick-skinned. Easily identified by their humorlessness and abrasive personalities, they are the bane of many ...

At a litigation low point many years ago, my frustrated client stammered around for awhile and finally sighed, "I can't help wondering if this would be going better if you were wearing pants." He meant if I were a man; women lawyers wore skirt suits all the time in those days. I forget my exact response, but I'm pretty sure ...

The Jury Expert, the publication of the American Society of Trial Consultants, just issued its third edition. It is, as they say, bigger and better than ever. There are eleven different articles by leading trial consultants, all offering practical insights for practical lawyers. The three lead articles are getting the most attention, because they deal with a challenge most of ...

A new case reminds us that in jury selection, economics and race are often the same thing. As Thaddeus Hoffmeister reported at Juries this morning, the Sixth Circuit yesterday decided Smith v. Berguis, overturning a Michigan state court murder conviction because the court selected juries in a way that disproportionately and systematically excluded African-Americans. Just trying to help The selection ...

While we're waiting for the judge to release the jury questionnaire in O.J. Simpson's robbery trial,* here's a questionnaire for collectors. Voir dire is under way in the Arizona trial of accused serial killer Dale Hausner, and Phoenix trial consultant Dennis Elias kindly sent me the questionnaire (PDF) they're using. It's a long jury selection; it started on September 2 ...

It might not be this one, now that Professor Sam Sommers has a blog. Sam Sommers teaches social psychology at Tufts. His research and writing deals with “race and social perception, judgment and decision-making, diversity and group processes, and psychological perspectives on the U.S. legal system,” his blog’s “About” page says. It’s not exaggeration to say that his work on ...

You know August is really over when the new Personality And Social Psychology Bulletin lands in the feed reader. It's the only scholarly journal I see where I regularly want to read everything, no matter how dense the writing is. (And it's dense.) Samples from the October issue, with my abstracts of the authors' abstracts: I'm Hot, So I'd Say ...

I really recommend an August recess. Congress does it, the whole country of France does it, and this year Deliberations tried it. I can now confirm: August — especially in Wisconsin when the heavy rains of June are only now drying and the chill of October looms — is no time to do any work that can honestly be called ...

Most trial lawyers hope their jurors will be alert, attentive, honest, and fair. Some lawyers, though, need more: they need jurors who can be noble. Defense lawyers in death cases come first to mind, but many other lawyers can succeed only if jurors can rise above defensiveness and retribution, and somehow keep themselves open to difficult arguments. Can you help ...

Remember how the corruption conviction of HealthSouth's Richard Scrushy and former Alabama governor Richard Siegelman was called into question when it looked like the jurors were researching the case on line and E-mailing their findings to each other? Sure you do; I wrote about it here, a year ago tomorrow. One of the E-mails went: ….judge really helping w/jurors… still ...

How do you know the trial isn't going well? When a juror applauds your opponent's closing rebuttal, that's a pretty good clue. The California Court of Appeal described the scene (DOC): During his rebuttal argument, respondent's trial counsel argued that appellant's witnesses were lying about many issues, including the reason it lost the new account. Then counsel read to the ...

That's the title TRIAL Magazine gave to my article in their July 2008 issue. That link is to a .pdf copy uploaded here, so you don't need to be an AAJ member to read it. (In fact that's the only way I can read it myself; I do too much defense work to be allowed in AAJ. TRIAL's generosity in ...

One of my law partners was called for jury duty awhile back. He returned with a striking story, a sort of Tale Of Two Lawyers. Defense counsel, he reported, sat with his client at counsel table during voir dire. But plaintiff's counsel sat alone; his clients had to watch from the gallery. Even my experienced friend, who could list twenty ...

There are two juror stories in the legal blogs today, each illuminating in a different way the level of respect we give to jurors. "We listened, we thought, we argued, we went on" First is the story of the juror who asked for respect after the trial was over. He wrote to a federal judge, frustrated because the group's hard ...

It's a familiar moment in many mock trials or focus groups where the key players on each side are of different races, but race wasn't explicit in whatever interaction led them to be opposing each other in court. (Many trials — employment disputes and criminal prosecutions are two common categories — answer this description.) After the jurors have talked through ...

What a week. We'll remember it more for its non-jury news — the ringing, historic Boumediene opinion (Gideon here on why it's a great moment, Scott Greenfield here on why it doesn't help actual Guantanemo prisoners that much), the odd, jarring Judge Kozinski news (Volokh here seems to speak for most legal bloggers, but likely not for the general public), ...

The California Court of Appeals opinion in People v. Carrasco (PDF) on Friday didn't quote this part, but it's easy to imagine. The jury has just come back guilty on an attempted arson charge. A California defendant can be convicted only by a unanimous jury, so the judge polls the jurors: The Court: "Juror No. 2, is this your verdict?" ...

I was on the Lake Effect program on Milwaukee Public Radio again yesterday, and honored to be there. The topic this time is sort of a Web 2.0 primer, focused on the questions I (and I bet other bloggers) get so often: what's a blog, does it cost money to sign up, how the heck do you have time to ...

Your expert is on the stand presenting her analysis of lost profits damages, or whether an unintelligible patent claim was infringed. As she’s explaining the most difficult part, you look at the jury, and your heart sinks; no one is looking at her. They’re contemplating the ceiling, studying the floor, looking away. Don’t lose heart. Maybe they’re learning. There are ...

If you try cases to juries, ideas like these are likely to catch your attention: "It is important to recognize that [Baby] Boomers are often traditionalists. They may use technology happily or begrudgingly, but as a whole they view it as something to augment the old way, not replace it." "Death-qualified jurors are more likely to be racist, sexist, and ...

There’s a new kind of journalism coming from a Kansas courtroom this week. It’s not just a live blog; those have been around for awhile. When I started this blog last February in the middle of the Scooter Libby perjury trial, one of the best jury resources was the live blog of that trial at firedoglake.com. After that came wonderful ...

Is the Fifth Circuit trying to change the way prosecutors talk to jurors? A few weeks ago I shocked the world — okay, surprised a few people — by pointing out United States v. Gracia, in which the Fifth Circuit reversed a drug conviction, finding that the prosecutor had improperly "vouched" for the credibility of federal agents who testified. I ...

New research confirms two things. First, I’m not the only one who keeps forgetting that fourth thing I need at the grocery store. And second, I probably won’t get better at remembering it. Translation for lawyers: if you need jurors to keep more than a handful of facts in working memory, you have to give them special tools. “A certain ...

Good things for jury watchers at other sites lately: –Elliott Wilcox wonders why lawyers say they're speaking "as an officer of the court" when they want to stress they're telling the truth. What are they telling the rest of the time? –Evan Schaeffer has six tips for improving direct examination at Illinois Trial Practice Weblog. –"I'm a bad blogger" is ...

In voir dire you need to be ready for anything, and anybody. I botched this in my first voir dire, a practice one in law school. "What do you do?" I cheerily asked a mock juror. "I'm a garbage collector," he cheerily replied. The great Irving Younger was our trial advocacy teacher at Cornell, and he'd told us to ask ...

I wasn't sure about the Jury Experiences web site early on, but I've become a fan. "What really happens in jury rooms" The site itself as evolved as much as my perception of it has. It was designed as, and still hopes to be, a forum, where jurors would post descriptions of their own jury experiences. When he started the ...

One of the more enjoyable prerogatives of a blogger is to give quizzes. Today's quiz is on the improper practice of "vouching" for a witness's credibility. Here's the line you're trying to draw: it's okay in closing argument to suggest what inferences jurors should make from the evidence, but it's not okay to insert your own credibility by vouching for ...

Which is more, $395,425, or $395,000? In civil trials, damages evidence is almost never clear to the penny. Instead, lawyers make judgment calls about the exact amount of damages to ask for. A new study suggests the decision may make more difference than you thought. This paper has been out for awhile, but I missed it until it was on ...

Back when Snyder v. Lousiana was argued, I wondered whether the opinion might be Justice Breyer's chance "to reconsider Batson's test and the peremptory challenge system as a whole," as he has put it. The Court decided Snyder today (the opinion is here, thanks to ScotusBlog), and far from reconsidering tests and systems, Snyder is one of the most conscientiously ...

Federal judge Amy St. Eve of the Northern District of Illinois may be setting a record for total pages of jury questionnaires used by a single judge. She presided over Conrad Black's trial that began a year ago this week, and approved the 45-page questionnaire used there. Now she is hearing the trial of Tony Rezko, best known as a ...