Strategic Jury Selection for Employment Cases: Voir Dire Best Practices, Juror Psychology, and Panel Management

Jeffrey A. Rager | Rager & Yoon

Mr. Rager is committed to holding entities accountable for their actions. Doing so discourages future bad actions, resulting in further litigation and burdening society as a whole. Mr. Rager’s trial record against the largest corporations and insurance companies speaks for itself. Mr. Rager has taken 43 trials to verdict and has obtained several multimillion-dollar verdicts with punitive damage findings in counties across California, including Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside, Merced, and Modesto.

Claire Plotkin | Your next jury

Claire Plotkin is a Jury Consultant based in Los Angeles. She has consulted on hundreds of cases and has picked well over 160 juries.

She works on all kinds of civil cases and picked many of the top 20 employment cases in California last year. She has a passion for helping victims seek justice and fights tirelessly to help her clients win cases. She is a mother to two daughters and prides herself in raising them to be fierce advocates for themselves as well as good team players and loyal friends.

If she’s not in court or volunteering with her kids’ classes, soccer teams, or drama class, you can find her running up and down the streets of La Canada or the Rose Bowl. She was a collegiate track and cross-country runner and still runs and wins races. She brings her competitive nature to the courtroom and won’t back down from hard cases and often wins cases in hard plaintiff venues. She loves speaking to lawyers and teaching them how to be better trial lawyers.

I. Understanding the importance of jury selection in employment litigation | 2:00pm – 2:12pm

• The importance of jury selection
• Conscious and unconscious bias determines how jurors process the evidence
• The importance of jury questionnaires
• Convincing the judge to permit through and in-depth juror questioning

II. Preparing for jury selection | 2:12pm – 2:24pm

• Preparing a questionnaire
• Putting together an outline for jury selection in employment cases
• Important issues to cover

III. Mini opening | 2:24pm – 2:36pm

• Benefits and downsides

IV. Jury selection | 2:36pm – 2:48pm

• Time to process jury questionnaires
• How to get the jurors talking
• Rewarding “bad answers”
• Body language of attorney and jurors
• Need for help during jury selection!
• Tracking the jurors responses

V. Using cause challenges | 2:48pm – 3:00pm

• Making jurors rehabilitation proof

Break | 3:00pm – 3:10pm

VI. Using preemptory challenges | 3:10pm – 3:25pm

• Do I use all my challenges?
• Passing to gain control

VII. The role of social media in jury selection | 3:25pm – 3:40pm

• Getting the juror list and doing research.
• How to use social media to gather information about potential jurors
• The pros and cons of using social media in jury selection

VIII. Dealing with a bad panel | 3:40pm – 3:55pm

• Any strategies that work?
• Don’t rely upon juror body language during trial
• Handling juror hardships
• Selecting alternates

IX. Post-trial juror management | 3:55pm – 4:10pm

• Ask judge to let jurors get a head start and reminding them about not being required to talk to attorneys
• Talking to jurors
• Watching opposing counsel talk to jurors
• Getting contact information