An Opening That Builds Trust
Voir dire is your first and best chance to win a Grand Slam verdict. You get to go first… a HUGE advantage. This is when you connect with the jury. This is when you teach them to trust you. To view you as their natural leader, a person whose guidance can be relied upon for fairly answering the questions on the verdict form.
Practice is Key.
A great voir dire has a structure to it, and we want you to feel comfortable in a structure that works for you. The GSV model asks you to rehearse voir dire as many times as your schedule allows, using separate evening sessions. All this practice will help you get very comfortable.
We will suggest you try this: Begin your Voir Dire by getting the jurors talking. If at least one juror is not talking within 30 seconds of the time you start your voir dire, we are losing. So Rule #1 is to ask an easy question that is relevant to the case but enjoyable for each juror to answer. We have several to choose from!
After that, we like to see you give the jurors context statements, which tell the jurors why you are asking certain questions. We ask the questions relevant to each context statement, and then listen carefully to the answers. And we watch the jurors. Are they engaging with you? Or keeping you at an emotional distance?
Then we create a team of listeners. And we will arm them with software, to keep track of the answers in a clear way… No more sticky notes! You get to stay focused on the jurors, not recording their answers.
When you make us a part of your team, we also will do everything we can to research the social media profiles of each potential juror. Sometimes the names and addresses of the potential jurors are disclosed early enough to make this possible – sometimes this is impossible.
For your public trial, we will be in the courtroom with you, giving you our best recommendations and helping your team perform its voir dire as effectively as possible.