Archive | Jury Research

The Major League

My family is a baseball family. My dad, the late Park T. Pigott, Sr. played baseball, coached baseball, and generally speaking, lived much of his life for baseball. I am not usually fond of sports analogies, however, recent experiences with clients of Magnus Research Consultants have reminded me of baseball. Almost all of Magnus’ clients […]

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This minor leaguer experience was one of the strangest situations we have had in years.  We had been, to keep up with the baseball analogy, “scouted” by the end client (that is the entity/person paying our bill).  Our ability to work with the lawyer was limited until that scouting was completed.  Admittedly, this process was […]

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Retainers

Call it a deposit; call it a retainer. Magnus doesn’t start work without one (except in rare circumstances beyond the scope of this post). We need money, we want money; importantly, other people want money. We learned, the hard way, that clients need to “show us the money.” One of our first cases blew up […]

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No one works for free.  By definition, work is performed in exchange for compensation.  (The obvious exceptions, such as slavery, human trafficking, etc., are beyond the scope of this post.)  The fact that one of the largest law firms in the U.S.A., as well as its client, one of the largest corporations in the world, […]

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Heuristical thinking

Biases and heuristics often, but not always, go hand in hand. While bias is attributed to the absence of reflective thought, leading to limitations in judgment, heuristics are used intentionally when making inferences. Heuristics are common sense reasoning strategies employed by laypersons. They are “shortcuts” that accelerate the decision making process. Heuristics may or may […]

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Magnus’ reports often contain a section entitled “Heuristics” and, when I’m showing our sample report to prospective clients, I usually have to explain what a heuristic is and why it is important.  I typically explain that heuristics are the ways that the jurors relate to a case – in their own language.  Whether it is […]

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Templates – Creating and Using

We spent some time recently updating the templates we use at Magnus. From day 1, I’ve worked on developing templates and, over the years, modifying them to keep up with changes as necessary. We have templates for reports, for contracts, and countless forms that help us keep track of our work. The only thing standardized […]

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David likes forms and templates more than anyone I have ever known.  When we are in the process of developing a new service, David routinely advocates for using a template to ensure things are standardized.  Although all of my questionnaires are custom designed to assess mock jurors’, survey respondents’, and other research participants’ attitudes about […]

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Hiding behind Email

Prompted by my posts about “different direction” and “ghosting,” a related phenomenon is hiding behind email, especially as a way to deliver bad news. Maybe it is just me, but it seems a matter of professionalism and fairness that, if one asks someone else to do something like prepare a proposal for consulting services, the […]

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I love to discuss, and write about, etiquette.  As a social psychologist, I am keenly aware of the social norms involved in etiquette, which involves far more than knowing which fork to use.  There is a certain etiquette involved in communicating with others, in both professional and personal settings.  This includes “responding in kind” to […]

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No One Has Ever Said They Wish Their Jury Research Had Been Later

In almost 30 years of owning and operating Magnus Research Consultants, David and I have been fortunate to have few complaints from clients. When there have been complaints, they have been of the following type: (1) “Your report is too long and comprehensive; it took too long for me to read”; (2) ”The charts summarizing […]

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This topic is salient because I had the discussion again recently, “What is your lead time for conducting research? My client wants to put it off as long as possible, because maybe they can settle…”  I patiently explained that the ramp up period, once we’ve provided a proposal, agreed on the research design, gotten approval […]

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Mercy of the Court

Twice this week, when talking with clients, or prospective clients, I’ve been told they are waiting on the judge to do something. The language they used was “I’m at the mercy of the court.” Their lamentations are painful reminders of the nature of our work. Often the idea of “mercy of the court” is mentioned, […]

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“I’m at the mercy of…” usually means one is powerless to protect oneself from someone or something.  When attorneys tell David and me they are at the mercy of the Court, this expression doesn’t have the same ominous meaning that it does in other contexts.  Often, attorneys mention being at the Court’s mercy as a […]

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Be Free

A number of Melissa’s and my prior posts have discussed aging parents, dealing with dementia, being a caregiver, and the like. Because we’re sharing our journey, I’m writing to report the end of a portion of that journey with the recent passing of my Mom. Melissa has written about this from a different perspective; my […]

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I keep hearing Martin Luther King, Jr. saying “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we’re free at last” as I reflect upon Carole’s passing.  If one is a spiritual person, one usually believes the soul of good people go to heaven (or a similar place, according to one’s religion) when they pass […]

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PowerPoint Exhibits: Good-Bad-Ugly

I had an interesting conversation today with a client who was preparing a PowerPoint presentation for an upcoming mock trial. As we discussed his plan, he mentioned that he was planning to use 20 slides for a 10 minute presentation. I tactfully suggested that 1 slide every 30 seconds is too many. This led to […]

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Death by Powerpoint.  That’s what I call the majority of Powerpoint and other, similar, electronic presentations.  I have witnessed countless attorneys “kill” their audience with electronic presentations that contain words, then more words, then even more words.  These well meaning attorneys, in their quest to educate the jury about their case, put everything they can […]

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Entrepreneurial Addiction

It is well known that gamblers must occasionally win in order to keep playing their games. The easiest example is that slot machines are programmed to give back a penny or a quarter based on some number of pulls of the handle (or, push of the button). I was thinking about this phenomenon recently when […]

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Interestingly to me, both David and I wrote this post on December 17, 2020, the anniversary of our first retainer check.  Although David and I are in two different cities today, we must both be thinking of Magnus’ beginnings and the hope we had for our continued success.  As anyone who knows me will verify, […]

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