Focus people.

This morning we’re going to talk about focus groups. Lawyers used to rely heavily on costly outside consultants to round up groups of individuals mirroring potential jury pools to test the major threads of their cases—often getting groups together in hotel ballrooms or office conference rooms filled with expensive recording equipment. That’s still very much a viable option as trial approaches in high-stakes cases. But the Zoom era has lowered the barrier to entry when it comes to getting feedback on a case from people in the communities where cases are set to be tried. Professors Elizabeth Fraley and Jim Wren of Baylor University School of Law, and their colleague Assistant Dean Stephen Rispoli, discussed some of the less expensive, virtual ways of conducting what Fraley called “jury-testing” with Laura Brown of the Brown Trial Firm in Waco, Texas as part of a webinar sponsored by the ABOTA Foundation yesterday.