Hitting the Experience Sweet Spot

When it comes to selecting caregivers, it turns out neither
Doogie Howser prodigies nor elder statesmen are a juror’s ideal.
We fielded a survey earlier this month and asked the nearly 800
respondents to tell us the “ideal number” of years a doctor or
nurse should have under his or her belt.

It turns out the sweet spot is six to 10 years, with 55 percent of
participants choosing this as the experience level they want in
their healthcare provider. Eleven to 20 years of experience fared
almost as well, with 34 percent of respondents wanting a doctor
with this number of years in the field.

To us, the outliers were the most interesting aspect of this survey. While only four percent of respondents preferred five or fewer years of experience, only six percent wanted a healthcare provider with 20 to 30 years. Less than two percent believed 30 or more years was the ideal.

These “sweet spot” biases uncovered in the survey are consistent
with those we have observed jurors apply in the courtroom.
Exit interviews conducted over the years have indicated the most
effective experts typically are those who jurors want astheir own
doctor or nurse. Just as jurors often have a difficult time trusting
an unseasoned “rookie,” so too are they skeptical of a doctor with “too much experience” and a potentially obsolete education. We have also heard the “arrogance” often associated with doctors is believed to be magnified among the oldest in the field, who jurors consider to be “too stubborn” to consider the latest research, medical advances or differing opinions when providing their opinions.

If you are in the position of presenting a highly experienced – or
the opposite – witness at trial, we suggest making your weakness
your strength. For the newbie, project energy and focus on
the fact he or she knows the latest in medical advances. For
the veteran, discuss that person’s high level of experience, the
“hundreds” or “thousands” of applicable procedures that person
has performed, and review any and all continuing education that person has received to ensure their knowledge base is relevant.

If you would like to talk about how to apply these findings to one
of your cases, please call us at 714.754.1010.

Book review: '27 Powers' convinces By the Deseret News

Book review: '27 Powers' convinces
Published: Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2011 12:08 p.m. MDT
By Rhett Wilkinson, For the Deseret News

"27 POWERS OF PERSUASION: Simple Strategies to Seduce Audiences and Win Allies," by Chris St. Hilaire, Penguin, $15, 240 pages

Leaning over someone, using five minutes to make your audience feel safe and staying in the present were just a few of the many, though often obvious, suggestions of persuasion given by Chris St. Hilaire in his book, "27 Powers of Persuasion," which has recently been released in paperback.

It's quite amazing to consider the many ways in which one can break down the methods of persuasion. For those who might think that a businessman, lawyer, politician, or reporter can simply walk into a room and cause everyone to agree with his or her points of thinking, St. Hilaire would argue otherwise.

Some readers may read a chapter in the book — each of which focuses on a particular method of persuasion — from the tactics mentioned above to using third-party validation and being your own pundit. Oft times, the suggestions seem of common sense, though others may not strike readers as such.

St. Hilaire uses excellent examples ranging from sports figures to business entrepreneurs to demonstrate his points — showing tact in one of his own suggested methods, "mak(ing) sure everyone's invested."

St. Hilaire also uses appealing personal examples, including, among other examples, the time he wore a pink shirt as a part of helping a team of lawyers recognize their reality.

In doing so, St. Hilaire has appealed to readership beyond just law or journalism, but to business owners and even parents striving to guide a family. St. Hilaire's appeal to a wide demographic through his strength of parallels is found from start to finish.

www.27powersofpersuasion.com

"Right Track"/"Wrong Track" -- Which is the Better Juror?

Are juror perceptions about America’s direction predictive of how
they might decide a case? The short answer is "yes.” After
792 interviews it’s clear — jurors who think the country is on the
wrong track demonstrate a stronger likelihood of voting for the
defense.

Over the past few years, our voter polls have mirrored national
polls which show the country’s citizens increasingly pessimistic
about our nation’s future (“Is the country on the right track, or
off on the wrong track?”). We wanted to see how these trends
were affecting juror verdicts — so we took a look at our data
from the past year. Overall, our jury samples show the same
downward trend, with respondents increasingly perceiving the
country on the wrong track.

Surprisingly however, our data demonstrated a strong
correlation between juror-respondents who believed the
country was on the “wrong track” and jurors siding with
the defense. In fact, 60% of jurors who reported
believing the country is on the“wrong track” also sided
with the defense during jury exercises. Those who
selected “right track” were evenly divided among
plaintiff and defense verdicts.

Do you think the United States is on the Right Track or Wrong Track?


So what do we do with that information? Well, if you’re stuck
on whom to eliminate (and working with the defense) — odds
are you should select the “wrong track” juror. It’ll increase
your odds of finding the juror mindset most predisposed to
understanding your side of the story. Call us if you’d like an
evaluation of your next case.

Judges Are People Too

You’ve likely heard us make the point that research is just as meaningful for cases you know will be bench trials as it is in jury trials – because themes that resonate with jurors often apply to judges as well.

A recent defense verdict for a case we worked on drove home this point, as several of the judge’s findings might as well have been lifted verbatim from our focus group report.

The case involved an internationally known shipping company that switched vendors for unloading services. Vendor A sued, accusing the shipper of stealing financial secrets and feeding them to a new potential Vendor. They claimed that Vendor B’s proposal undercut their prices, and that’s why the new vendor snagged the contract.

From the defense perspective, Vendor A wasn’t even in the running for the contract, given its poor productivity and equipment so outdated that one employee described its facility as a “forklift graveyard.”

Research participants heard the details and determined that the defendant acted “unethically but not illegally.” And here’s a direct quote from the judge’s final ruling: “The defendant’s conduct was likely unethical, but not illegal.”

The judge went on to cite several points for both sides that were spot on with what the focus group uncovered.

This is why it’s important to remember that judges and jurors have a lot in common. Aside from technical issues of law, judges are just as attuned as jurors to arguments that resonate based on common sense and prevailing predispositions. Whether your case will be heard by a judge, mediator, or a group of people who couldn’t get out of jury duty, we always advise telling a simple, effective story.

Jury Impact in the New York Times

Jury Impact is once again in the news, with Chris St. Hilaire quoted in the Monday edition of The New York Times. Here is an excerpt from The New York Times article: Bonds Jury Hears About Injection Again but Reaches No Verdict

Chris St. Hilaire, the president of Jury Impact, a jury-consulting company based in Costa Mesa, Calif., said the jurors probably asked for Kathy Hoskins’s testimony and a transcript of the Hoskins-Anderson tape because they were debating Bonds’s alleged injections.

“There’s a very strong possibility, based on the type of questions they asked and the information they asked for, that there is some contention among them,” St. Hilaire said. “There could be a couple of people who are holding out because they are strict constitutionalists or maybe there’s a guy who just doesn’t want to convict his favorite ballplayer. Or there could be someone with a strong personality who just refuses to give in.”

St. Hilaire said the evidence might have been enough to make it seem to the jurors that Bonds used steroids and human growth hormone, and was injected by Anderson, but in criminal cases, prosecutors must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“In a criminal trial, if he probably did it, it’s not good enough,” he said. “That’s a nuance that sometimes escapes the layman.”

Jury Impact in Bloomberg and The New York Times

Jury Impact is once again in the news, with Chris St. Hilaire quoted in Thursday editions of Bloomberg and The New York Times.

Here is an excerpt from The New York Times article Selecting Jury for Bonds Is Hard in Giants Country.

Chris St. Hilaire, president of Jury Impact, a jury consulting company based in Costa Mesa, Calif., said that finding a juror without a predisposition toward Bonds would be a challenge.

“Finding someone who doesn’t have an opinion about Barry Bonds is like finding a cowboy who doesn’t have an opinion about a horse,” he said, adding that the ideal juror is likely to be a casual fan who has heard of Bonds, but does not know much about him or the charges against him.

“You’d think that the perfect juror would be someone who loves baseball, but I think the worst juror for them would be a hard-core fan,” he said of what the defense might be looking for. “You want someone who can be swayed by the evidence, not by their agenda.”

And an excerpt from Bloomberg's piece Bonds Jurors Face Ban on Texting, Tweeting About U.S. Trial Under Proposal:

In what jury consultant Chris St. Hilaire called an unusual addition to such questionnaires, prospective jurors would agree in writing to an order forbidding them from communicating via social media, the Internet, “or any other form of electronic communication for any purpose whatsoever,” according to a filing yesterday in federal court in San Francisco.

“I haven’t seen it used before and it’s a recognition of the new world we live in now,” St. Hilaire, president of Costa Mesa, California-based Jury Impact, said in a telephone interview. Lawyers in the case “are trying to be specific because they know how influential social media is now.”