Harry and Dan – Celebrating 12 Months of Helping You Pick 12 Jurors

Voice over (: 00:02

Ready to take your verdict and jury selection to the next level. Jury consultant Harry Plotkin and trial lawyer Dan Kramer are your ticket to tipping the scales before trial begins. You're not just picking a jury, you're Picking Justice. Produced and powered by LawPods.

Dan Kramer (: 00:20

Welcome back to Picking Justice the final episode of the year. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah. Whatever you celebrate. I hope you're enjoying it with family and friends and wrapping up all your trials for the year and hopefully you've done well and gotten justice for your clients. But what we want to do for this episode is bring you the highlights, the best of what has become a wonderful podcast. We hope for all you great listeners out there. We really have been honored to have brought you this and been your host for this last year, our first year doing this podcast. Harry, how do you feel after doing this for a year?

Harry Plotkin (: 00:58

I mean, I've loved it. I love hearing all these different perspectives and when lawyers have come up to me telling me how much they've enjoyed it, it's fun to hear them. I always tell 'em like, we love to bring you different ideas, not the same old stuff you've heard for the last 20 years. We love guests that have blown your mind about some things that they do, whether you agree with it or not, whether you try it out or not. I've learned a ton of new things, and Dan, I'm sure you have too. And so I'm looking forward to hearing a bunch of crazy ideas next year, some of which are probably going to be

Dan Kramer (: 01:24

Amazing. Yeah, no, I agree, man. I mean, it's been such a pleasure doing this with you and truly are wonderful guests. I mean, these are some of the people I've looked up to my whole career and I know many of our listeners do too. Just seeing not only what great trial lawyers they are, but just wonderful people and they really do believe that teaching jury selection is one of the most important and often overlooked things in our trial lawyer community, I guess you could say. And so everyone's been very excited to do it. We have an amazing lineup set up for ARDI 2026. Really excited to bring even more and different perspectives like you said, because I've learned so much from all our guests. I mean, I was just looking at the list. We've had Ibiere Seck, Ricardo Echeverria, Steve Vartazarian, Gary Dordick, your wonderful wife, Claire Plotkin, Arash Homampour, Joe Fried, Bob Simon, Lourdes DeArmas, Khail Parris, David Ball, Randi McGinn, Craig Peters, Kurt Zaner, Pat Salvi, Sean Claggett, Kathleen Nastri, Rahul Ravipudi, and Mike Alder. It's kind of the who's who of the plaintiff's bar. And like I said, next year we have to match, if not exceed that lineup right there and it's going to be great. Really, Harry?

Harry Plotkin (: 02:34

Oh yeah, I can't wait. And I know we're going to be talking next year a lot about, we're going to focus a little bit at least on some actual specific examples of trials and verdicts and talk about the jury selection, not just tell war stories and everything, but actually talk about what were the challenges in that case and what did you do unique in voir dire and how did you handle this and that, I mean, people love to, I think you're going to be really excited to hear about how they handled some specific issues that came up in these real trials because those are the hardest things to prepare for. I mean, every jury selection is different, right, man, I mean, there's always a new thing. Whether something a jury says out of left field or a weird issue with your client or the case, it's going to be a lot of fun.

Dan Kramer (: 03:07

I think one of the biggest things is that the reason why we wanted to do this podcast is it is the scariest thing to do for a lawyer, a young lawyer, old lawyer, a new lawyer just started practicing, been practicing for 30 years and have had gotten great verdicts, but voir dire is the hardest thing. I'm going to pick a jury on Monday and it's a pretty simple straightforward case. It should only take me three days, but I don't know. I mean, I still get the nerves, but this podcast has really helped me just kind of see that everyone has a different way and you don't have to copy the way someone does it. It's really taught me to try to go away from the scripts. I think there's been a lot of great conversations we've had this year with people about how they really just open up, they let the jurors talk, and then once you kind of let down that guard and you let go of the script and you just listen like a human being, it really does free you, which I've really taken a lot from this year.

(: 03:51

But thank you so much to our listeners. All the feedback you've given us, destructive criticism, I mean everything. We are open to it all and we do take it to heart and it means so much to us When you come up to us at conferences or events and you talk to us about these episodes, we want to give you the best information. We want to give you the best education, and we love having our listeners as guests. So please just reach out to us and if you have topics you want to cover or people that you think we should talk to or yourself, please let us know. You should have our email addresses all of our contact information. We really want to do this for you, and we really do try to cut out the bullshit. We're not just sitting here just talking about how great each other are or the other, I mean, I really like to get right to it, as you guys know. And so we want to keep that up because really we're here to educate on this very important part of trial that we think is truly how you get justice for our clients. So with that, enjoy this best of episode. Thank you to our sponsors. Harry, any final words before I say one thing about the fight we have ahead in 2026?

Harry Plotkin (: 04:50

No, just hope you're resting up and getting ready for some trials next year. I mean, it is always a time that I think courts kind of slow down and so it's time I kind of slow down at least a little bit, but hope you're taking a little rest before you start picking some juries and kicking some second defense. But in 20 26, 1

Dan Kramer (: 05:05

Thing I do want to say is at least in California, and I know this fight is everywhere throughout the country, is that we have probably the battle of our lives ahead of us in 2026, as most of our listeners in California know Uber put an initiative is putting an initiative on the ballot in the midterm elections in 2026 in November. That is kind of a wolf in sheep's clothing, so to speak. They're trying to frame it as they're capping attorney's fees, but what they're really doing and what their goal is as a multi-billion dollar corporation is to just wipe out any access to justice for victims of auto crashes. And what they're doing is they're basically saying that the injured party has to get 75% of any settlement or award, and that means that 25% is left for the doctors, the attorneys and costs. And so what it effectively does in reality, what it's going to do, and they know this, they're doing this on purpose, is that it's going to completely cut out any ability of any lawyer, of any of us, any trial lawyer to bring a case.

(: 06:05

Because if you think about it, if it's a hundred thousand dollars case, say there's a $30,000 eris, a lien, which you can't negotiate. Say you spend $10,000 in cost, you have to eat your cost. You don't even get a fee. The Uber knows that no attorney can function like that. We can't obviously pay to handle a case. We would not be able to keep our employees or our staff or make a livelihood. So it's not even about capping attorney's fees. This is about truly cutting off any access to justice from someone who could be seriously injured or killed by a negligent driver of any kind. And Uber sees this as an opportunity to try to save their multi-billion dollar corporation lots of money by getting rid of all the auto claims they can. And they're not just going to stop at auto. I guarantee you if this thing passes, it's the end of trial lawyers as we know it in California because they're going to come after premises cases, they're going to come after employment cases if they see that voters want this, which is going to be misleading to the voters, the voters certainly do not want this because it just makes one big corporation richer and takes away the ability of even Medi-Cal or Medicare to get their money back.

(: 07:10

So it's really the taxpayers now have to pay for the negligence of a corporate driver, whereas before Uber would have to now the burden's on the taxpayer to pay for the medical care, then that person who is severely injured or they lost a loved one, now they have no way to get compensation for the loss of quality of life that we always talk about in this. I do want, it's important, I take the time, I know a lot of you don't practice in California. I know a lot of our listeners do, but if it's going to happen, if it's going to pass in California, it's going to go everywhere. And these corporations know that if a state like California falls and the trial lawyers fall in California, it's going to spread like wildfire. So this is a fight for our survival, and I'm not trying to be chicken little here, but it's true.

(: 07:50

This is it. And we have to fight fire with fire and we are, because this is really a giant corporation just trying to save money and really at the harm of the people that need it most, the severely injured, the disabled, the ones who are wrongfully killed. So let's fight this together 2026, we're going to need to unite as plaintiff lawyers and fight this fight. So thank you for that. Give me the time to explain that, but it's just extremely important. So thank you. And we will keep giving you the information, the education to get justice in the courtroom because our clients, number one, that's all that matters, is making sure they get justice in these insurance companies and corporations can't get off the hook and it starts in jury selection. So go to trial, go to trial, go to trial. Don't be scared, don't take settlements that are not full value. Go to trial and we will help you along the way. So with that, enjoy this episode. Merry Christmas, happy Hanukah. Have a great new year. Can't wait to hear from you all in the coming year. So take care. Bye. See you in

Harry Plotkin (: 08:46

2026. We're going to be teaching everything you could ever want to know in different approaches to jury selection because as you know, and you're an amazing trial lawyer, I work with you all the time. Jury selection is the hardest thing you can ever do in a trial. I mean, everything else you can script out and you know what's coming, but jury selection is good luck scripting out what 50 strangers are going to say you to your face when you're trying to figure out who's good, who's bad.

Dan Kramer (: 09:14

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I mean that's one of the biggest reasons I think we got behind this was as a young up and coming as a current, a successful, wherever you are in your trial lawyer journey, I think one of the hardest things to do is pick a jury. And I think one of the hardest things to find was how to do it well, how to do it the right way, finding your own voice. And I remember I would scour the internet, YouTube, Spotify, anywhere and just be like, I just want the jury selection stuff. I want to hear how these trial lawyers do it. How do they ask questions? How do they ask for money? How do they get cause challenges? What do they do if a judge gives them 20 minutes? I was looking for all of these tips because like you said, you can't really script voir dire.

Ibiere Seck (: 10:02

I'm astonished at some of the verdicts that I've seen in the last two years. I served on the CAALA Trial Lawyer of the Year committee many times over the last five years, but last year I chaired it. And when I tell you the verdicts that we were seeing, I mean dozens and dozens and dozens of eight figure verdicts, we were seeing nine figure verdicts five years ago, 10 years ago. That was unheard of. And so people have really mastered the art of trying cases and I am so impressed. I'm not talking about seasoned lawyers, I'm talking about very new lawyers, people who are just entering the profession, who are just having the courage to try cases. I mean, I'm in awe of it and I love watching people in trial. I don't care if you've been practicing 50 years or five months if you're picking a jury, I want to see it. So I'm just really impressed, very proud of my colleagues. We're doing good work, we're serving the community and we're holding corporations and institutions and entities accountable.

Ricardo Echeverria (: 11:14

Well, I'll say something like, folks, I know you're here because you have to be and we appreciate that. And I want to tell you right up front that you don't owe me anything. You don't owe the court anything with the exception of one thing. So only one thing that you owe all of us as part of a citizen of this great country, and that is your complete honesty. That's all we can ask for because the only way this system works is we get 12 people who come in truly with an open mind. And then I'll say something too to get the skunk out on the table about biases. That's a negative connotative word, and I'll take the sting out of that and say, we're here to talk about whether people have biases. And the truth is everybody has biases. I have them, you have them, everybody does.

(: 12:00

And I'm not saying it in a negative way, it is just that some biases we have because of where we were raised or how we were raised or experiences that happened to us. For example, if you were a victim of a certain crime and you're on a trial where the exact same crime as that issue, you may not be the right juror to hear that because of an experience that you had. So all we're trying to do in this whole process is just to get those issues on the table because we want people that are the right jury for jurors for this case, and you may be that person. On the other hand, you may not be, maybe you're right for the case three doors down the hall and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. So we just want people to be forthcoming and try to instill an open, honest rapport from the very beginning of it no matter who they are.

Steve Vartazarian (: 12:49

One juror told me something in 2009 and she said to me, look, when we first sat down, the thing that you need to understand is you got up with righteous indignation already alleging that they're such bad actors and they got up with the right to defend themselves. What you need to know is that the beginning, we don't give a shit who wins or loses. Don't think that because you represent the injured party, you're in some way, shape or form righteous. You're not. You're not. So they don't care who wins or loses. They're very, as Harry would put it, neutral as we would like them to be. But they could tell what you have when they look in your eyes, when they see how you speak, move, refer to your client, refer to your case and all that. I've learned that if you're not confident in your case, it's not a good sign. So you could either know you're going to lose, not be sure about it, or you're damn sure you're going to win. And so what I've learned to do is only show up on cases where I'm damn sure I'm going to win.

Gary Dordick (: 13:51

We have a tendency, I think as trial lawyers to work on broad assumptions. All doctors and medical people are bad for PI cases. Healing arts and teachers are good. We have these stereotypes that we try to follow and to a certain extent we have to, stereotypes often prove accurate, but believe it or not, in talking to a lot of my friends that try cases, particularly Hispanic lawyers, they're finding the educated Hispanic jurors are the most difficult jurors on uneducated Hispanic plaintiffs that don't speak English or speak English but have gotten in some trouble. For example, on civil rights cases, if you talk to lawyers that try them, they get rid of every law abiding, working Hispanic juror because it seems to be their attitude is we came to this country legally, we worked hard, we work hard to establish our community, the reputation of our people, and you guys are ruining it. You guys come here and break the law. You guys don't learn English, you don't acclimate to the community and they're the harshest jurors ever. Whereas most people think people that have similarities will take care of each other, that Hispanic people will take care of another Hispanic person. And in that case, it is rarely proven accurate.

Claire Plotkin (: 15:20

I do think your very soft-spoken, sweet, kind-hearted plaintiff jurors are the easiest walked off for cause they're the easiest because they are so not ready or armed to push back. You could picture it, you could picture it like a 22-year-old soft-spoken young woman. Maybe she's like a preschool teacher and they're like pleasers and nice people and they're not going to fight. So you have to give them the tools so they know that they're not the wrong person because a lot of these people, they don't want to be wrong. The only time I've ever had jury duty, I was so nervous being there and I was like 21 and the judge made it sound like a huge deal and I started crying during voir dire because I thought that I was being told I was wrong. Actually, truly, this is a lesson to all of you guys who don't feel this way. I truly thought that if I said I couldn't follow the law that I would go to jail. Just so you know, there are jurors who feel like this in a courtroom. So it's super important to make them feel comfortable and let them know what their role is and what their job is so that way they don't just tip over when a lawyer pushes them just a little.

Arash Homampour . (: 16:33

It's really a very organic process and you just start with global questions. If it's a left turn case, how many people have made a left turn? Where an incident's been involved? Who here has strong feelings about motorcycle riders? If it's a brain injury case, maybe talking about brain injury. But you do need to structure your discussion in a way that it sounds like you deserve to be there, but again, you're not overselling your case. You can't just jump to who believes in giving $60 million for this type of an injury because you haven't earned their trust, you haven't earned their even logic. I mean the way I think most people is I'm very logical mathematical, you have to prove liability first. You then have to get to damages. We don't start with the sympathetic plaintiff, here's a lot of money, no one cares, no one's vested in giving you 60 million without a justification.

(: 17:22

And so many times you're going to ask the jury, look, you haven't heard any evidence. And I understand it's kind of maybe off-putting to throw out this number, but I don't have any other opportunity to ask you if you can award this kind of dollar amount if the evidence justifies it. Now, before you get to that question, you need to lay out, you're going to hear evidence that my client suffered a brain injury and that brain injury requires 24 hour supervision and that 24 hour supervision requires this much money and it's going to cost this much. It's going to be a damage, it's going to harm them for 40 years. So you give the basic facts that justify why you're asking for so much.

Harry Plotkin (: 17:58

My goal is, and it's true, is that every time I look back, maybe five years at the stuff I was doing and the advice I was giving, not that it was necessarily bad advice, but I want to look back every five years and be like, what the hell was I doing? That was crap compared to what I'm doing now. I mean it was still good, it worked, but if you could just keep getting better and better and looking back and saying like, man, the way I used to do it was effective, I was getting verdicts, but man, I could have done it so much better. That's just growth and learning and progress, man.

Dan Kramer (: 18:24

I mean that's a good point. I think society changes though, and I think it's changing quicker. I mean, what do you think about in terms of jury selection from how people consume information to the news to what's going on topically it changes. Just like we've talked a few times about comedians and how the art of comedy is really truly one of the hardest, most difficult art firms for a human being to do because you have to make people laugh. Pressure's all on you. You have no instrument, no backup singers. You're not reading a script so to speak. You're reacting to what the audience gives you or what they think is funny. And audiences change comedy changes. And so I imagine how we talk to jurors is going to change, especially when you're the world we're starting to go into with AI and consumption of media and all that.

Harry Plotkin (: 19:13

I mean, it used to be not that long ago that you would face a room as a plaintiff lawyer and the jury would be pretty hostile. And now after COVID, there's a bunch of reasons why it's like you get in there and there's not that much hostility. You got to work hard to find those few jurors who sort of are hostile, but they don't necessarily present themselves as much as they used to in these big groups and everything. So times change and it could go the other way at some point, who knows? But you got to just be ready for everything.

Joe Fried (: 19:41

Something that I like to do is I like to model for the jurors. So in that for instance, it's all about the juror, whether we're talking about jury selection or we're talking about closing argument, we're talking about any building the case, it should be about building the case for jurors. I mean, we can't forget that we're not building the case for, you're not building the case for just anybody, any audience in the world. It becomes very specific to what the jury is or you're going to try the case to. And so you have to make it okay in jury selection. Also, I mean part of, even if you go to Nick Rowley's kind of brutal honesty thing or you go to a number of other people, sort of signature beginnings of jury selection, what it's all about is making it safe to say what's really on your mind as much as is possible.

(: 20:30

So the quickest way to do that is to model it in a vulnerable way. And that's also true by the way, in closing argument, when you're concerned about them going back and closing and having a discussion about some X thing which is bad or you think is bad, you model it by saying something like, if I am not the strongest guy and if I were on the jury, I might have a tendency to start letting my mind drift to X. And while I know that that's human, I also know that that's not a proper thing to consider in a case like this if I'm a juror. And so I would need my brothers and sisters on the jury to come beside me and hopefully gently but firmly remind me that that's human. It's perfectly human, but that's not appropriate for here. I don't want to wake up two weeks from now and realize that reached the wrong verdict for the wrong reason.

Dan Kramer (: 21:27

So Bob, let me ask you real quick. So do you ask directly who's already thinking this is a billboard lawyer case or I'm an ambulance case, or are you asking them how they feel about you directly or what's the way you introduce the billboard lawyer?

Bob Simon (: 21:41

We heard the facts of the case and how many people think there's too many lawsuits? I do too. And people see a lot of lawyers and there's this negative connotation. That's okay. I mean some lawyers probably deserve that, who thinks right now as we sit here, we haven't even heard the facts like, man, raise your hand. These guys are just here for cash. This is like a lottery for them. This is just a money grab. And if we do, let's talk about it. And I always bring up this phrase as a judge in Texas told me, if you talk, you got a chance to walk, so talk to me, don't hold it in. So that's good. I always start off with kind of a mini joke, and this is how you try to find good jurors right off the jump is I say my thing and be like the judges.

(: 22:21

We heard a lot of jurors that couldn't serve. They had something in their life, they tried everything they could. We saw those jurors try everything they could to get off this jury, but who here is really excited? Who wants to sit here for the next two or three weeks and make a decision? Raise your hand. And most people will laugh and you always get one or two people and those people end up being really good plaintiff jurors, they just want to be there to do the right thing to be empowered. So you talk to them and say, why is it important? And now they're empowering the rest of the jury, this is my civic duty or whatever they want to say, and we all have better things to do and the defense will try to get rid of those jurors and those other jurors, remember whenever they kick somebody off a jury that wanted to be there, and I always say, thank you. You sound like you're being an excellent juror for this case. We would love to have you on here and you move on to somebody else.

Dan Kramer (: 23:05

So tell us what is your strategy and how you present it. Now if you don't say, does anyone have an issue awarding millions of dollars for human losses or things like that, how are you kind of introducing the concept

Lourdes DeArmas (: 23:17

A little slower when I don't have time limitations, but most of the time if the judge does a thorough job and they ask, has anyone been injured? Or I ask that question, have anyone been injured in an accident or has a family member or a friend? And then we talk about the specifics, which each individual juror to the extent that time and boredom permits because the last thing you want is to hear 20 stories of someone having someone at home being injured or them being injured and really getting into how they deal with pain. A lot of our cases, Dan, are chronic pain cases at the end of the day, whether they've had surgery or not. And getting into the specifics medication wise, treatment wise, getting into a lot of those specifics to then circle it back on how everyone deals with pain differently.

Dan Kramer (: 24:07

Wow, that's interesting. Okay.

Lourdes DeArmas (: 24:08

And everyone quantifies pain differently. And then I would get a specific juror that takes care of a mom that's in a wheelchair that is in constant pain, that mom has some good days and some bad days, and just because she has some good days and is able to do a little more things does not mean that the pain has gone away. Kind of instructing the jury on the concept of chronic pain and how it ebbs and flows and then circling back to my client towards the end

Khail Parris (: 24:38

When I get the questionnaires, I have a scoring system of one through five. One is must get them for cause five is must keep them as best I can. And then there's everything in between. And I have the tort reformer Question section is probably the most important things. Do you start out thinking claims for emotional distress or exaggerated? Do you think verdicts are too high? I mean, Harry, you probably have a better questionnaire than I do, but that's the most important section and that's really the section I'm going after. And then the second most important is the background information because kind of how I build the tribe and make it engaging with people. Even a juror who's bad for me, if I know that they have a job that I can relate to or that I can crack jokes with them about, I start there then go to the cause stuff. So it's fun. It makes me a real person. I like trying cases with other people because I can bring them into it. Like this last case we had, you guys know Alex Wheeler guy looks extremely polished and so I love making jokes at his expense about how he's really not that polished. So we had somebody who would track Kylie Jenner's Instagram for a job and I was like, Alex is going to be so excited to talk to you later. And he gets uncomfortable and it just makes us look more human doing that and it's fun.

David Ball (: 26:03

Well, let's start at the beginning. How many times, and I know you've seen this lawyer gets up from his counsel table if he's allowed to in North Carolina or not, but if you can and walks over to where he is going to do voir dire as if he's getting up to get root canal work a very wise and one of the very first trial consultants out there, Diane Wiley, who in many ways was one of the she and Susie McPherson and a few other of the elders from elders, they're still younger than me from the National Jury Project and some others. Wiley always said the first requirement of voir dire is that you find a way to enjoy it and stop getting up as if you wish you were dead. Stop getting up with a clipboard in your head. You have this remarkable opportunity to find out about some human beings.

(: 27:03

And if we've learned nothing recently, people like Nick Riley and others teaching us, it's about humans in case we didn't know that before. Well, if you don't enjoy finding out about these people, it's not like you're looking for people in the bushes who are aiming a rifle at you or going to shoot you maybe on the base sort of is. But these are human beings. You've got a unique chance to find out about them or any other mental trick or construct or little internal song that you love that you play to yourself when you get up. So your, I'm not saying get up and do giggles, but this is a privilege that you should enjoy having and make that real for yourself somehow.

Dan Kramer (: 27:49

We're going to break down something that actually Harry and I have coming up here. We are about to start trial together and I was going through the judge's rules with Harry just to kind of see, get a feel for what he does during voir dire and I came across a paragraph that was hidden in a very long trial order that says he gives usually about 20 minute voir dire for 35 jurors. Harry and I was not a fan of that statement. And so today we're going to talk about how do you deal with that? How do you deal with the 20 minute voir dire first, how do you deal with it to try to get more and then if the judge is not going to budge, how do you talk to 35 jurors in 20 minutes? Harry? And I know you see this in certain counties quite a bit, don't you?

Harry Plotkin (: 28:40

Yeah, I do. I do. I mean it's almost worse than some of my federal juries because when you get a federal trial and a judge does give you a little bit of voir dire time, I've seen you get 10 or 15 minutes, which sounds like less, right? But sometimes that's your voir 14 people in 15 minutes at least. That's a minute per person. 20 minutes for 35 people is like, Hey, what's your favorite ice cream? Okay, I ran out of time. But it's one of my favorite things to teach because it can be done. I've done it a million times, it's not ideal. But unfortunately from what I'm seeing, it's like it's happening more and more these days as these judges just feel this pressure to move these trials along and they don't like, I dunno, I think some judges I think feel like when they see lawyers voir jurors, they don't like some of the things that they're seeing and so they're like, I'm going to stop this lawyer from preconditioning the jury or using tricks to get rid of jurors for cause they don't like it. So I think for some judges it's here to stay less and less time, even though, I mean honestly 30 minutes less of vo dire, is that going to save a lot of time in the trial? It's going to save 30 minutes. So it's not like these trials are going to run a week longer because of voir dire. Yeah.

Dan Kramer (: 29:48

What do you think the right amount of time is? What do you think the reasonable amount of time is?

Harry Plotkin (: 29:52

I think most judges would like my perspective because I also believe you shouldn't bore em and take a ton of time. I don't think, I mean when judges say, Hey, you're going to talk to the first 18 jurors, how much time do you think? I think an hour is plenty, but that's still over three minutes per person. And so one thing I know we're going to at least try Dan, and I've done it in other cases and with some success with some judges and not with others, is, I mean filing a declaration for me as a jury expert, but whoever basically saying, Hey, this case has a lot of unique personal issues, sensitive issues, controversial issues, and so we need more time. And I always say at least three to five minutes per person, depending on how many issues there are and how sensitive they are.

(: 30:34

Because if you're going to spend all day long, like 18 jurors, the jurors are going to start hating you. And honestly, after the first hour or an hour and a half, you're not learning new things you should be able to figure out. I mean then you're just wasting time. If you get too much time, you're going to waste time and the jurors are going to probably hate you for it. But I think three minutes per person is anything less than that is tough. Alright, so want to thank our sponsors again. The first one is Verdict videos. Kelly Deutsch. If you don't know Kelly Deutsch and Verdict videos, welcome to the plaintiff bar. I know that for Dan and myself, we work a lot of the same cases. My wife and I, we have focus group their videos and focus groups and jurors have loved what they've seen of these things I've seen the increase in value in the settlement value of these cases is sometimes tens of millions of dollars more after the jurors watch their settlement doc videos or day in life videos than before they watch the video and day in life videos.

(: 31:23

I don't know if you use 'em, Dan, but they're not just for trial settlement. Videos for mediation are an effective tool for trying to settle cases pre-lit too. I'm sure you use both of them.

Dan Kramer (: 31:31

The best thing about working with someone like Kelly is that you're not handed off to other person or you're just dealing with projects. You will get Kelly's cell phone. She knows how to talk to clients and I think that's one of the hardest things when someone's being invited into their home, she'll talk to the client, she'll sit down with a client, she knows how to tell a story and she's just such a wonderful person, truly empathetic, compassionate, she really understands what a client's going through and that shows through in her production. And she's wonderful. We love her. She contributes to the community. I know through L-A-T-L-C, the charity and all that. She's a great person, very easy to work with, great pricing, and really will add a lot of value to your cases.

Harry Plotkin (: 32:12

And I know what a lot of lawyers that I talk to love most about Kelly and Verdict videos is they're always honest about whether they can help or not. I know there's cases where she has said, I don't think I can in this case, but I know that she's told me our motto is video can hurt you as much as it can help you. And so I know she actually cares and it's strategic about how she can help in these cases,

Dan Kramer (: 32:29

Which is very true. I think in general everyone's like, oh, I need to have the best animation, I need to have this, that and the other thing. Sometimes less is more. And again, it's important to work with vendors who are going to be straight up with you and who are going to be honest like Kelly and not just want your money from the case. She will be straight up and those are the best vendors to work with. Another wonderful sponsor I'd like to thank is my dear friend Melissa Baldwin from Baldwin Settlements. She is a structured settlement broker. She's fantastic. She's one of the first people I met when I became a plaintiff's lawyer and has just given back great advice. She's another one of these people you can call, get some advice, and she'll really go out of the way to help you out. She supports CAOC, Cala, all the a j.

(: 33:12

She's a huge sponsor of all these organizations. Her and her structure team worked tirelessly with the attorneys and clients and she really makes the hard fault result easy for the client. I mean, I had a very tough case from someone who was basically homeless and she was able to make him understand he did not have any education to speak of, barely spoke English, but get him to understand how important it was to structure the money because a lump sum in the many millions of dollars just would not have been good for him given that he had some issues with drugs and all that. She was able to speak to him at his level and get him a structure that really set him up for the rest of his life and she was willing to work day and night, anytime, weekends just to help get it done and get the best rates she can for the clients.

(: 33:57

And she also does not just structure. I used to think I'd be like, look, when I was just starting out, my cases aren't big enough for you Melissa. She's like, no, no, no, it's not just for the seven eight figure settlements. It's really for all clients who just need some help to structure and she can also structure fees, which is great if you want to put a little bit away for yourself and your family later on. So call Melissa Baldwin from Baldwin Settlements. Really great person, great friend. These two sponsors are just wonderful women and they run great businesses and good people. And lastly, we just want to thank Law Pods for making this possible. These podcasts, whole library of attorney podcasts truly help all of us get better and I highly recommend you just listen to 'em. I put 'em on the car. I'm listening to all these trial lawyers throughout the country with all the experiences they have and it's just such a great avenue. We can't make it to courtrooms all the time, but we're hearing from the best. So thank you for Law pods for providing that platform.

Randi McGinn (: 34:52

I thought that given the work that we do for a living that I understood profound grief because we're dealing with catastrophic, horrible things happening to our clients all the time. And the truth was until my husband of 30 years died about five and a half years ago, although I thought I could understand it, you can't understand it until it really happens to you. And that gave me such insight because somebody who's experienced profound grief can explain it to the other jurors. And if you haven't, people don't really understand it. They just think that they do. And that was probably my husband dying was probably the hardest thing I've ever done in my whole life. And I'm a very upbeat, positive person. Had you told me that I would be a crying person, nobody said, oh, that's just not me. And there you go, your husband dies and you're crying every single day. I mean, you're just god awful. And it made me realize that people who've experienced that would be wonderful jurors. But what happens when we voir di on damages is of course we get up and voir di damages and the defense stands up and says, okay, all of you who've suffered a horrible tragedy, this would be too hard for you. Anybody gets off the panel. And so you have to figure out a way to find those people and then not just find them, but to keep them.

Dan Kramer (: 36:15

But Craig, I mean I do want to hear it because I do think there's also a lot of downsides to having to do the whole panel, especially when you have 45 minutes for 58 people. But what's your philosophy? And maybe we're missing something, maybe we should all be pushing for this.

Craig Peters (: 36:29

Well, and the devil's always in the details, right? Yeah. 45 minutes is not enough time. The panel that I picked in front of Judge Taylor, we had two days, so I got basically a day, and then the defense got basically, a day now was I think there were three defendants or four defendants, something like that. But again, the argument is look, give me two days with this jury, with this whole panel. Let me fully and fairly question them and find out how they feel and how they think so we can figure out who the people are that aren't good for this particular jury, and then we're going to run through it. I mean, Lord knows if you've had a trial in front of Judge Taylor, no Moss is growing on those floors there. I mean, things are moving along. So I'm all for efficiency, but not just for efficiency's sake. It has to be placed in the right spot. And it is true, I think from a lot of trials that I've watched other people do, and quite frankly I'm sure from some of my own trials at times where we have beaten a dead horse that we've giving 'em a fact, we're giving 'em a fact again, and we're giving 'em a fact a third time, we can be more efficient.

Kurt Zaner (: 37:36

So I tell them I was excited when I got the jury summons. I was going to go in there and learn how it all works from inside the courtroom, but of course it came on a really busy week. The kids, I throw all my kids in there, the kids had a lot of practices and work was going crazy and I didn't want to show up, but I did. And so did all of you. And all we're trying to do in these next 15 to 20 minutes is trying to figure out if you all can be fair jurors for this case because we have all these experiences that make us great humans and great jurors, and those include biases and opinions and thoughts and beliefs, and we want you to have those because those make you good jurors. But sometimes those make you unable to serve on a jury for this kind of case.

(: 38:18

And so we're just trying to explore those. I'm not trying to pry, I'm not trying to put you on the spot, but we do have to ask you some questions. And I throw Keith Mitnick in there. Maybe it's like if I was asked to judge a pie contest, I hate pumpkin pie and if there's like I know it's going to be on the ballot, I'm going to be for against that no matter what because that previously held belief, this opinion that I've developed over years of mom's Thanksgiving dinners is not going anywhere. And that's all we're trying to do. There's no jury jail. If you answer this wrongly, if the judge behind me who looks scary in the dark, rob looking down on you, ask you if you can follow the law, it's okay to say no. They're not going to put you in jury jail. So all we're trying to do all both US defense lawyers and also the judge want is some brutal honesty. We just want you all opening up and letting us know what these experiences are that make you a unique human and whether they can fit into this case because the rules inside this courtroom are very different than the rules outside the way you want to act and believe and have a conversation. Very different here. And can we follow the rules? And that's it.

Harry Plotkin (: 39:18

How do you start out your voir dire when you're suing a doctor? Not necessarily one that everybody on the jury is going to know, but just the fact that it's a doctor and people like doctors. I mean, how do you frame, what do you say first when you're saying, Hey, we're here suing this doctor. I hope you give me an open mind about it.

Patrick Salvi (: 39:33

Yeah, it's not the first thing I do Out of the box. Out of the box as they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression. So I try to come out at the beginning and make some sort of a connection with the jury. Usually they've just heard that it's a medical malpractice case, there's been a catastrophic injury or a death, and if they're picked, they're going to be there for two plus three plus weeks and then certainly not the least of which they're there to answer questions from strangers in front of 50 other people, which is most people's most dreaded thing. And so I try to connect with them on that in some way right out of the gate with a little bit of levity and understanding. And I talked to them about how powerless they might feel now, but how powerful they will be if they're imp paneled on the jury and how important the case is.

(: 40:17

So I try to then take that concept and then start to empower, start that process of empowering the jury, which is critical in malpractice. So not to skip ahead too far, but certainly you need to get out in front for these jurors and say, Hey, look, some folks think that not having gone through nursing school or not having gone through medical school in a residency or a fellowship and having the training of a doctor or a nurse or other healthcare professional means that you're not in a position to pass judgment on them who feels that way even a little bit. And so making sure that with questions like that and others, you're making sure that you're getting people that have that courage and make them feel like they're courageous in so doing and theming that as well.

Sean Claggett (: 41:03

So every case is going to have a theme. A common one is where a defendant will lie about something. Now, I'll give you an example. I have a case right now that we're working up, it's a slip and fall at a casino in Vegas and they claim that my guy was drunk and threw up and he slipped on his own vomit. That's the story that they put in their incident reports. That's the story they were going with. The problem is they didn't realize we had video of what really happened. And so when they became aware, casinos oftentimes lose videos, believe it or not. I know that's surprising that a casino would lose a video, but they didn't in this case and we were able to get it. And so the case is going to be about this lie and then what they tried to do to cover it up.

(: 41:50

And so the theme that I'm going to make sure is I'm going to have a question in my vo dire that goes like this. How many of you, I'm talking on the jury panel now. How many of you have been lied to? Everybody raises their hand, everybody's been lied to. Then I say, okay, how many of you been lied to and had the person that lied to you try to cover it up? Pretty much everybody raised their hand. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes people, they actually don't think they've ever had somebody lie to 'em and cover it up. That's because probably a little bit gullible, whatever kind of tells you something about those people and the way that they view life. They probably have a hard time believing people would do that. But then here's the essence of the question and say, okay, now for all of you, I want you to tell me which of these three statements best fits how you feel. Number one, the lie is worse than the coverup. The lie is worse than the coverup. Number two, the coverup is worse than the lie. And the third is the lie is just as bad as the coverup. And then you ask the panel that question and you learn about them. But now you've planted the theme.

Kathleen Nastri (: 43:00

As far as I know, we're the only state that does what we call individual sequestered voir dire. It's guaranteed in our state constitution, which is really amazing if you think about it. And so when we pick a jury, we see each individual person by themselves alone in a room, one at a time, and we can spend hours with each individual juror and weeks trying to get a jury that is the right jury for the case. Sometimes we actually do it in a courtroom, but today what I'm doing, I'm in Bridgeport, and the jurors who are waiting to be picked are sitting in the courtroom in the jury box, and then we're sitting in the actual jury deliberation room, which is just, as you would picture it, it's a table with a bunch of chairs around it. And we go out to the courtroom, we tell the juror we're ready to speak to them.

(: 43:43

They come in, sit at the end of the table, and then one of us asks questions until we're done. And then the other one asks questions until they're done, and then we make a decision right there. The other thing that we have, we have a very brief introduction in the main courtroom. So the jurors know it's a malpractice case. They know who the parties are, they know a very little bit about the case. This case involves a prostatectomy that went bad. And so they know that. So when they come in the room, they might immediately want to tell you something about what they heard, but for the most part, they come in knowing nothing and we know very little about them. We don't have wifi in our courthouses, so we struggle with the whole Google looking up information about people. We don't have the lists the day in advance or two days in advance.

(: 44:24

We get a list a minute before we get the juror and we have their name and it tells us where they live and whether they've had jury duty before. And that's about it. Connecticut's nickname is the Constitution state, and we take our constitution very seriously. And so I think the right to trial by jury was so embedded in the people who wrote the Connecticut state constitution's minds that they were very mindful that nothing should interfere with not only the right to trial by jury, but the right to a trial with a fair jury. And so we have never changed it.

Harry Plotkin (: 44:54

One of the things we'd love to talk about is what is something that you do uniquely or something that you do in voir dire that you see a lot of lawyers do in the opposite way, and you're like, I wish people would learn that's not the right way to do it, even though it's kind of conventional wisdom. What's on the top of your list?

Rahul Ravipudi (: 45:09

That's a great question, Harry. And I'll say that there are so many different philosophies as to how to execute vo dire as a plaintiff trial lawyer. And there's a lot of great approaches. I think one of the things that people try to do and I think is a mistake, is to try and mix approaches. If your approach is a belief that you're going to be able to build a tribe and get these jurors, no matter where they come from, their life experiences, their preconceived biases, and you're going to get them to galvanize together, then that's an approach. And you should take that approach and take it all the way to the finish line. If you're somebody with a philosophy, and one of my core beliefs is that I can't change anybody's mind on what their biases and prejudices are. They come with them and in the five minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes that I get to talk to them or they get to hear what I'm talking about.

(: 46:06

I'm not changing their minds, they're not changing mine. And I just think about life in general. I've got so many close friends, we don't agree on everything, and I don't mind telling my friend, I just don't agree with you. If I don't mind telling my friend, I don't agree with them, what do you think? How am I going to approach a stranger who tries to ask me about a question and get me to change my mind on my belief system? It's just not going to happen. And that's part of my philosophy, and that's why identifying jurors with biases and prejudices that are relevant to the issues in our case, and then having them recognize that and then excuse themselves for cause or at least allow me to get the cause challenge established, is my discipline.

Harry Plotkin (: 46:51

One mistake I see is that if you have plenty of time in voir dire, this doesn't apply. If judges giving you 20 minutes for voir dire, but you don't have to, voir dire, shouldn't be cross examine from the very beginning. You shouldn't be feeling this pressure to as soon as you hear something bad from one of the jurors to cross examine them and try to get 'em off for cause, like voir dire goes much better if you're just having a nice conversation with him about their feelings and getting them to open up instead of immediately being like, I got to nail this guy down for cause in the next 30 seconds,

Mike Alder (: 47:20

And that's changed the order. With that understanding of when I go into the traditional things, right, when I'm going into fee caps and paying money for pain and that kind of stuff, I've pushed that back in my questioning because I don't want to start out with you're bias that I'm here to try to figure your ass out. And that'll be after, Hey, I really need your help in this process. I'm trying to help you talk. You're trying to help me figure out to get to the right pool of jurors, and that's really helpful when in the judge's questions, you got somebody who's already out there, this guy looks like a joker, and I'm like, that's great. It allows me to just kind of start with, I'm a joker and that's exactly what I want you to do, and that starts a conversation. You want to ask those questions about caps and money and lawsuit lotteries and billboard lawyers and whatever to me after they've taken a breath and feel more comfortable in telling you how they feel. So I've learned even, I don't know what number I'm on total, but certainly well over a hundred jury trials, but in a row in what, 10 months I've learned that I've pushed some questions back. Now I've started to maybe start with some initial questions of direct rather than a broad picture to get people to just start talking.

Voice over (: 48:55

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