When to Run a Jury Focus Group: A Stage-by-Stage Guide for Trial Lawyers

Most lawyers think of a jury focus group as something you do a few weeks before trial. That is a good time to run one, but it is rarely the best time to run the first one. By then, discovery is closed, the depositions are taken, and the case is what it is. A focus group run earlier can still change the case itself.

Here is how trial lawyers use focus groups at each stage, and what each one can tell you.

Deciding whether to accept a case

Some of the most valuable focus groups happen before a lawyer signs the case. A large investment in a case that jurors will not accept is the most expensive mistake a contingency practice can make. A focus group at intake shows you how ordinary people react to the core facts: whether they blame the defendant, whether they blame your client, and what bothers them that you had not considered.

It will not give you a reliable verdict number, and you should be skeptical of anyone who says it will. What it will give you is an early read on liability, the attitudes your client will face, and how much work the case will take to win.

During discovery

Jurors are very good at spotting what is missing. When a panel hears an early version of your case, their unanswered questions become a discovery plan. If several panelists ask why the company did not have a written policy, whether the driver had been disciplined before, or what the plaintiff was doing in the moments before the incident, those are the documents to request and the questions to ask.

A focus group during discovery tells you what jurors want to know, so you can go get it while you still can.

Before depositions

Depositions lock in testimony, and you only get one chance to take them. A focus group before key depositions identifies the issues and witnesses that matter most to jurors, so you spend your time on the admissions that will actually move a jury rather than the ones that only matter to lawyers.

It can also show you which witnesses jurors find credible and which ones they distrust before they ever hear from them.

Before mediation

A focus group before mediation shows you how jurors weigh the strengths and weaknesses on both sides. That helps you set realistic expectations with your client, decide which points to press, and explain to the other side why its defense will not play the way it thinks.

The value here is less about a number and more about how jurors reason about damages: which elements they accept, which they resist, and what moves them.

Before trial

This is the traditional use, and it remains a good one. A pretrial focus group lets you refine your themes, test the order of proof, see which exhibits jurors latch onto first, try out the words you plan to use in opening, and learn the attitudes to explore in voir dire. Some lawyers use an adversarial format at this stage, where attorneys present each side in a “clopening,” much like a mock trial.

How many focus groups does a case need?

There is no fixed number. Many significant cases benefit from more than one: an early session to evaluate the case and plan discovery, and a later one to sharpen the trial presentation. Running the same case before more than one panel also shows you which reactions are consistent and which were specific to one group.

Jury focus groups with Alex Hoffspiegel

Alex Hoffspiegel has moderated hundreds of jury focus groups for other lawyers over the last 15+ years, in civil and criminal cases of all types, while trying cases of his own. Sessions are available virtually on Zoom for cases anywhere in the country and in person in the metro Atlanta area. Learn more about jury focus groups or check availability for your case.