How to run an online mock jury
You have lived with this case for two years. A mock jury tells you how it sounds to twelve people hearing it for the first time, while you can still change how you tell it.
You have lived with this case for two years. You know why the defendant is liable, you know which document proves it, and you cannot hear the story the way twelve strangers will hear it in an afternoon. That gap is what a mock jury closes, and it closes it while you can still change how you tell it.
The traditional version costs enough that most cases never get tested. An online panel changes the arithmetic, which means the question stops being whether the case justifies a focus group and becomes what you want to learn from one.
Five steps, start to finish.
Decide what you are testing
"Is my case good" produces nothing usable. "Does the jury blame my client for not wearing a seatbelt" produces a number you can act on. Pick one or two questions the case actually turns on, and build everything around them.
Size the panel to the question
A dozen participants with long-answer questions tells you how people reason about your facts. Two hundred with structured questions tells you how often they land on each conclusion. The first is a conversation, the second is a measurement, and confusing them is the most common mistake.
Recruit to look like the venire
Your panel should resemble the jury pool in the county where the case will be tried, not the general population and not your contacts list. If the venire skews older and more rural than your panel, your result is about a jury you will never face.
Present it the way you would try it
Show the opening as you would deliver it, play the deposition clip, put the exhibit on screen. A summary of your evidence tests your summary. The point is to test the thing the jury will actually see.
Ask before you argue
Open-ended questions first, while they are still forming a view, then the structured ones. Ask what they would need to see to change their mind, which is the answer that tells you what to put in the case in chief.
What a panel looks like before it runs.
Everything above becomes four decisions you make once: how many people, who they look like, what they see, and what you ask. The defense case belongs in there too. A panel that only hears your side gives you a number you cannot take into mediation.
- Recruit to the county, not the country. Match the venire where the case will actually be tried.
- Field it asynchronously. Nobody has to be in a room at 9am on a Tuesday, which is most of why the traditional version costs what it does.
Panel setup
DraftPanel results
312 participantsThe median matters more than the average.
One participant who awards four million pulls your average somewhere no real jury will go. Read the median, then read the spread, because a case where answers cluster tightly is a different negotiating position from one where the same facts produce wildly different numbers. A wide spread is itself a finding: it usually means the jury is filling a gap in your story with whatever they brought with them.
- Watch where reactions cluster. Timestamped responses against video show the second the story lands or loses them, which is more useful than knowing they disliked the witness overall.
- Read the long answers yourself. The percentages tell you what they concluded. The written answers tell you why, and the why is what you can change.
- Look for the objection you did not anticipate. The value is rarely confirmation that your good facts are good. It is the concern that half the panel raised and you had never considered.
Four ways a mock jury misleads you.
Presenting only your side
A panel that hears the plaintiff's case and no defense will find for the plaintiff, and you will walk into mediation with a number built on nothing. Put the other side's best argument in, made as well as opposing counsel would make it.
Testing in the trial county without thinking
Recruiting locally gets you a realistic panel and risks reaching people who could end up in your venire, particularly in a small county. Know your jurisdiction's position on this before you recruit, and keep records of who participated.
Treating twelve people as a statistic
A small panel gives you reasoning, not frequencies. Reporting "67% found for the plaintiff" from a group of twelve is eight people, and eight people is an anecdote with a decimal point on it.
Running it too late to matter
A focus group two weeks before trial tells you what you are stuck with. The same panel run before the demand goes out changes the demand, the discovery you take, and whether you try the case at all.
Know the verdict before you file the demand.
Build a panel from one reviewer to several thousand, show them the deposition video and the exhibits, and get the split, the damages range, and the AI's reading of where they broke, without booking a room or hiring a consultant. Focus groups are in the $49 plan alongside everything else.
Common questions about mock juries.
How many participants do I need?
Are focus group results discoverable?
Can I use my own contacts as participants?
When in the case should I run one?
Does an online panel really substitute for an in-person one?
The software that does this for you.
CaseFuze handles the ledger, the statement, and the checks. $49 per user per month.