Jury consultants are urging trial lawyers to use tools available on the Internet to do their juror research.
A note of thanks to our colleagues at The Daily Record, who posted a piece in the Los Angeles Times. The L.A. reporter had to go all the way to Charlottesville for one of his sources, Dr. Jeffrey Frederick of the National Legal Research Group.
Savvy lawyers can learn the attitudes of a potential juror, particularly a younger person, with a quick online search, said Frederick. That means Googling his/her name, scouring social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace or searching blogs for any comments the potential juror may have posted.
In describing the importance of this research, another consultant went nuclear: ”Anyone who doesn’t make use of [Internet searches] is bordering on malpractice,” he said.
Posted by Paul Fletcher
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1 OK, don’t find it on Facebook (any more, anyway) // Sep 30, 2008 at 3:02 pm
[...] Facebook and other social sites can turn into electronic evidence. Note how this post dovetails off this morning’s item from the L.A. Times on juror research on [...]
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