EP 523- Jury Selection Part Two

Episode Notes

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to The Jury is Out a podcast for trial attorneys who want to sharpen their skills and better serve their clients. Your co-hosts are John Simon, founder of the Simon Law Firm, Tim Cronin, personal injury trial attorney at the Simon Law Firm and St. Louis attorney Erich Vieth.

Erich Vieth:

This is another episode of The Jury is Out. I’m Erich Vieth. I’m here with Pat McPhail of the Simon Law Firm. Welcome back Pat.

Patrick McPhail:

Thanks for having me again.

Erich Vieth:

We’re going to continue our discussion on voir dire. Alright, so you’ve been kind enough to provide me some notes that set out some topics that we can discuss here today. I’m just going to read one of your items. Information is nothing without context. Your context is your case. Tell me about that.

Patrick McPhail:

Yeah, so the way that you generally find jurors that are going to be bias in your case is you got to tell ’em a little bit about your case, right? I mean there’s going to be things that are going to apply to all cases that you’re on the plaintiff’s side you’re going to be asking for. The burden of proof is more likely than not. Causation means cause or contributed to cause. Those are issues that are going to generally apply to every case so that you might find those for every case. But the big kickers for each case are your big issues. The big issues that you want find for better or worse, basically it’s the defenses of the other side. You can’t go in there and say, Hey, the defendant’s defense is X, who’s who’s just going to hate me because of this? You got to be a little bit more, I guess tactful about it.

But some things it’s just facts. Okay? If you got an auto case where your client had alcohol in their system or something, you just bring it out there and you just level with people, Hey, this is a fact. In our case, knowing nothing about the case other than that, is there anybody that’s just never going to give me a fair shot? They just can’t get over the fact that my client did this or something like that. Those are defenses that you got to get out earlier. The better that you can’t figure out how people feel about those bad points when it’s too late and then it’s always too late after jury selection. You got everybody locked in.

Erich Vieth:

It seems like there’s a line between how much you can go into that without it turning into an argument potentially or how you got to frame those issues. So let’s say a products liability case and the defense’s product misuse reckless took off the safety guard or something like that and it would be tempting kind of spin that they’re going to say this over there, but to spin it in your favor by kind of letting ’em know. But there’s also evidence I expect that will say this about why they did that, but where’s that line when you don’t want to have the judge smack you down and call you foul, but put it, you want to prepare the jury, but maybe this is not the right time to do it in voir dire, but you want to go as far as you can to the line without going over.

Patrick McPhail:

Well, I really kind of disagree with the idea that some people call it conditioning or put another fancy word on it as far as trying to get the jury panel around to your side of the case in any sort of direct way, because that’s not our job. Job in jury selection is not to find the people that are good for you. It’s that’s not the way that you do things because think about it like this. If you go through all of the bad facts in your case in jury selection and you get off all the people for cause that aren’t going to be good for you, you’ve done your job because whoever is left is all going to be open-minded thinking of all these terrible things about your case and that’s all they’ve heard from you. Then an opening statement, you get to say, okay, by the way, all of these counterpoint A, B, C, D, well then they’re like, okay, well I can really be on board here.

So in a sense you are kind of counter conditioning. You’re not going in there trying to argue your case, but you are trying to figure out who on that panel just is not going to be good with some particular facts as far as not getting swatted down, I don’t think that you really mentioned what the defense is going to say or things like that. You just mentioned the facts of the case. Now the statute in Missouri says people who have formed or expressed an opinion concerning the matter or any material fact and controversy that may influence the judgment of such person, those are folks that you can get off for cost. That’s what the statute says. So you have to be able to explain facts in controversy in order to figure out whether people have made up their mind about it. It’s kind of something where a judge is going to let you go to a certain extent and no further because I think the real idea behind the statute is that something that people actually know about and so they’ve come into the case with an idea.

If it’s an individual fact in your case and you’re just trying to argue it, most judges aren’t going to let you do that. But like I said, I gave an example of people that are, you got a plaintiff who had a blood test come back and they had drugs in their system or something like that. Your idea isn’t to say, well, who’s going to listen to these other facts? It’s to say who knowing no other facts other than that doesn’t matter what else you hear. Does that fact alone just mean I already lost the case too? And that is something that I think most judges are letting you do because that is a disqualifying answer. If they say, yeah, it’s over if I hear that, because that’s not what the law is. So if a judge says, I am only going to only going to allow people off for cause if they can’t follow the law or they can’t and they say I cannot be fair, well that’s a really difficult standard to meet, but it’s something that you just got to work with and it is not following the law.

If there’s some fact that people aren’t going to listen to the law, they’re just only going to judge based on that fact. So that’s how I usually argue it. I usually don’t draw objections. I draw less objections these days. Whenever you’re younger, you got to be prepared that you’re going to draw more objections. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen John draw an objection in vo dire. It’s kind of funny. Whenever you get the more gray, you get less objected to no matter what the statement might be the same statement. But I mean that’s a good point for younger attorneys to remember is that you’re going to be held to a little bit higher standard as far as what you can legally do and not do. Whenever I first started doing this, man, I would bring a red well with my case law to explain why I get to have asked this question or figure out this from the jury and I still have it on my shelf, but same red. Well, it probably needs to be updated, but I haven’t had to pull anything out of it and several years because people just don’t object to me like they used to. But that’s part of the preparation. Something that you can actually control about voir dire is your preparation.

Erich Vieth:

Let’s go to an example of defective car. It’s a products liability case. The car defect allegedly caused the accident, but the driver was intoxicated to some extent, and so you raise that issue. There will be some evidence of intoxication if you know what’s coming in and a whole bunch of people raise their hand, and so my question is about that line. Where’s the line? Some people might say, case over, I’m never going to give you a penny. And then that’s easy, they’re gone. But then some people would go, I don’t know about this. It is going to be tough for me to, this is making me uncomfortable. Or they’ll say all kinds of things without saying I’m not a good juror. They’ll say something short of that. So what do you need them to say in order for the judge to say you are not able to sit on this case?

Patrick McPhail:

Okay, so first of all, I would venture to say that most people, even on a really bad issue for you, are not going to tell you, yep, it’s over for you. Okay? There are going to be times that you get that, whether it’s a personal issue for them that they can’t get over there and this hypothetical, somebody whose family member was killed by a drunk driver or something like that. There are going to be those times, but I would venture to say most people are going to be equivocal about it and then the lawyering has to kick in. You have to have that conversation with people and to get to what your final point is, and we’ll talk about how you do it, but your final point is, well, how do you get ’em to say what the judge wants? Well, number one, you got to know what the judge wants at a pretrial conference.

A lot of people like to say, judge, how do you set up your Courtroom for jury selection? That’s the logistics. I always say, judge, what do you need from me to get people off for costs? I don’t beat around the bush. Every judge tells me what they want. It’s not going to be good enough if you just say, well, maybe I’m not the right juror for this case because judges, they don’t think that’s enough and I don’t necessarily disagree. I think the idea should be that we err on the side of caution because if we have a big group of people and somebody, like I said is equivocal, as long as we’re not breaking the panel in which most of the cases you’re not going to, let’s let the people off that are going to be close calls. But it’s always good to know, judge, what’s your magic words?

And a lot of times you might hear, oh, I don’t have magic words, but you’re going to have to get somebody to be a lot stronger. You’re going to have to be, well, I can’t be fair and impartial or I can’t do this. I can’t follow the law. And that’s part of your buildup. You talk to people whenever you identify people like, okay, I know that that juror is somebody that I don’t want on the panel. If they’re saying, well, it’s going to be tough, I have a problem with this, that might not be enough to get ’em off for cause though. So you just ask them the very easy next question, why do you have a problem with that juror number seven, what are you thinking? Tell me more about that. Tell me more. And then usually it’s a personal experience or maybe how they were brought up or something they don’t believe in.

Then you kind of move them back around to what your standard is. I think that almost any judge is going to see what the statute is and say you formed or expressed an opinion that might affect your judgment. Well that’s a lot easier to say than I’m not going to be fair and impartial. So most people will say, yeah, that might affect my judgment in the case because I have those feelings about it. That’s something that you go straight to the judge and says, let’s write in the statute. They formed an opinion about this that might affect their judgment.

Erich Vieth:

So lemme throw, let’s give an example, and I know we don’t have a judge here. It is just you and me talking, but the person says, my brother was killed by a drunk driver 18 years ago and I think of him every day. And so I’m just hesitant to award large sums of money in a case like this hesitant. What would you do in that case

Patrick McPhail:

If people want to volunteer personal things like that, and I don’t want to go too far into personal lives like that, but the idea that it’s personal for them, is that usually enough to get you where you want to go? Because basically what you then talk to ’em about is you’re sworn to secrecy about this case until you’re dismissed as jurors, but eventually you’re going to go back to your family and friends and how is it going to be? How for you when you tell people, okay, I gave a verdict into this case and I know this has affected our family really, really in a related matter if it’s junk driving or whatever, but I gave a plaintiff’s verdict where the guy was drinking and how are you going to feel talking to aunt and uncle so-and-so that lost their kid? I mean, that’s going to be tough, right?

And it’s going to come out. People will know you spent a week on a jury. That’s something that might affect your life, right? Your personal life. So a plaintiff’s verdict in this case would negatively affect your personal life. I mean whenever you start getting people saying that, yeah, there’s no way I’m going to be able to keep this from affecting my future. I mean no judge leaving that person on the panel because that is certainly something that’s going to affect their judgment in the case. That is the quintessential not right for this case juror. And it just depends on what they give you. But the key thing is to just keep digging and figure out why it is people feel a certain way whenever they’re coming into it. And if it’s something where they want to volunteer personal information and you run with that, but you speak about it in general enough that you’re not prying.

Erich Vieth:

Have you heard others use or maybe you’ve used this talking to the juror. Would it be fair to say that based upon your experience that my client will be starting behind somewhat in this case?

Patrick McPhail:

Yeah. Is

Erich Vieth:

That

Patrick McPhail:

Enough for a judge? It depends on the judge. Depends on the lawyer too. Like I said, you get a little bit more gray haired and you get a little bit more leniency or you get a little bit more leeway for most judges. I don’t think that just simply someone stating that in the abstract, well, this person might be starting out ahead. It’s not always going to be enough. Some judges that will be fine, some judges it won’t be. I like the idea of that, but I think you go further with somebody that says somebody starting out behind, right? It’s kind of like my example of well hey, the rams are a defendant. I’m not going to be able to be fair. They’re going to be starting out behind in my view. Why? Because, well, I can’t give ’em a fair impartial, be a fair and impartial juror because of my experiences, because of this just stating, well, one side’s starting out ahead. I mean you could say that for just about anything, one side’s starting out a little bit ahead because they don’t have the burden of proof, right? Well, it’s all facts, right? That’s true. And I don’t think a judge is just going to say, well, just because they’re holding you to your burden of proof, we can kick ’em off for, cause it’s something where I don’t ever think, okay, I got that person off for cause because they said the plan’s starting out a little bit behind.

Erich Vieth:

Let’s talk a little bit about the back and forth that sometimes happens. So let’s say a person’s a little stronger than starting behind, but they go, I’d be very hesitant to award damages in this kind of a case based upon the alcohol usage. And then you’re thinking, okay, they’re gone and then defendants turn, okay, so you’ve seen this, they stand up, I know you’re hesitant, but in this case can you agree to listen to the evidence before you and will you agree to follow the instructions? So tell us how that plays out.

Patrick McPhail:

Yeah, so the key rehabilitation, the statement, you’re going to be able to set aside those feelings and base your verdict in the case based on the facts that you hear and the laws the judge gives you. Well, of course everybody’s going to say that, right? Who sitting there is going to say, Nope, the judge is instructing me on the law and I’m just not going to follow it. Do it long enough. You’ll find one or two people that actually will say that, but for the majority of people, the vast majority, they’re not going to say, oh yeah, it doesn’t matter what the judge says. So you kind of do. I mean this is what I do with it. I prewarm them for the rehabilitation. The real standard in Missouri is that to rehabilitate somebody, you got to get them to say that or give unequivocal assurances that they can set aside their bias or whatever their problem was on the direct with the plaintiff’s attorney and then judge the case fairly right, unequivocal assurances.

Well, that’s actually a really easy standard for me to meet as the plaintiff’s attorney if I get out in front of it because I can just talk to people and say, okay, because of this bias, there’s no way you would be able to give us unequivocal assurances that you can just set that aside and then put this case or judge’s case fairly. I mean, that is a standard that I don’t even know if I would be able to meet on a lot of issues. So I think that you use that. A lot of judges love to hear those magic words and that’s a magic word that’s really helpful for you. Get it out there and ask ’em. I mean unequivocal assurances, and that’s tough for me to get around to. That’s kind of like the burden of proof in a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt. I’m like, oh man, I’d be a terrible juror because I can think of a reasonable doubt for everything. Think of a reasonable doubt for gravity. So it’s those legal buzzwords. If they help you, you

Erich Vieth:

Use them. Okay, one of your notes here, some judges won’t let the juror be the judge of his or her own qualifications. If that juror goes, I’m not in a good position to sit here in this case. Well, you

Patrick McPhail:

Said it, but are you

Erich Vieth:

Talk about that?

Patrick McPhail:

Yeah, usually when you hear that a juror is not the judge of their own qualifications, usually it’s in the terms of rehabilitation, it’s that, well, I can be fair. That’s the sort of thing where you usually get, well, a judge says, well, a juror, they’re not their own, the judge of their own qualifications. So a juror can’t say all this terrible stuff about one side or the other, get off for cause and should be off for cause. But then at the end say, oh, I can be fair. That’s usually where you hear that, but it can be thrown back around at you the other way. If a person says, no, I’m not the right one for this jury, that is true. A judge doesn’t have to take that and the judge doesn’t have to take anything unless it’s something where it’s the exact words of the statute or some Missouri Supreme Court case that says this person is not qualified for this jury.

A judge has extreme discretion about who to strike and for good reason, right? A transcript can’t show you what the judge sees. Those little nonverbal cues, the way that someone acts or any number of things that the appellate courts are just never going to know. That’s why a judge gets so much discretion, the ones who actually saw and heard the inflection of people’s voices. But it’s a valid point. Whenever a judge tells you they can’t just say, no, I’m not good for this case. And it goes back to what I talked about earlier. Someone might be equivocal about their response. They might give you something that you know don’t want ’em on your case, but you got to get ’em further. The question is why? Why is it that they’re not right for the case? And if somebody’s trying to get off of a panel, anybody can lead ’em down the primrose path and say, okay, well why not? Oh, because of this, because of this. That’s why you’re not qualified. So the why is really important to every aspect of jury selection. The why.

Erich Vieth:

This question just occurred to me, it’s not related to anything we talked about really, but could you imagine having an attorney be a juror on one of your cases?

Patrick McPhail:

I can imagine it, and I have had it happen to me before that jurors have been on panels and for one reason or another we just didn’t strike them. I mean, the funny thing is, I’ve had this happen multiple times. Defense counsel, somebody that I see on a regular basis on the other side of my cases, they’re on the panel and they know the magic words. They know that they can’t say. And if they want to give you a hard time, maybe you weren’t nice enough to ’em in the last case, they’re not going to let you get a cause strike on them. And I’ve had to use per strikes, but never even people that are generally going to be on the other side of my cases, judges, they’re like, you didn’t get there. You didn’t get ’em to say the magic words, what I need.

And you got to use peremptory strikes. I think that as a plaintiff who’s trying to convince people, my first thought is usually I don’t want somebody in the law because those aren’t people that are, I guess as moldable as others, people that want to come into the case and you can’t set aside their knowledge of litigation, right? They’re going to be the ones who know all your tricks. They’re going to be the ones who know the way to actually filter out things that a lawyer is saying. And it works both ways. Certainly a lawyer on a panel, I don’t think that most of us that are members of theBar are just going to be super biased against anybody.

Erich Vieth:

Yeah, I’m not talking about necessarily biased in one direction or the other, but

It seems like they’ll have a disproportionate voice. There’s 12 people, everybody looks, they might look more toward this person. They might have a lot of the weight of the case on one person. And the whole idea is to have groupthink if that’s the right term. Crowdsourcing. A jury should be a group of people almost democratically pushing and pulling each other in the deliberations. And you can imagine somebody going, Hey lawyer, if this guy’s been arrested 80 times, will they tell us this? And the lawyer in deliberations, I guess it’s free to say no. They typically don’t tell you about

Patrick McPhail:

Arrests. Deliberations are secrets. So they can tell you what they want to. And here’s a counterpoint though. Say you have a really hard case or a case with an issue that you just can’t get past easily, people are going to focus on it unnecessarily. Sometimes you might want somebody on that panel that knows the law that’s going to stick people to the burden of proof is more likely than not and not beyond a reasonable doubt. So it’s not always going to be bad for you to have somebody that knows the background or that you think is going to get looked at. We call ’em leaders, right? A leader is only bad for you if you either don’t know where they lean or if they lean against you. So you look for leaders mostly because of what I was saying, you don’t want people to be on your panel that are going to take over or anything that you said people are going to look up to with a disproportionate voice.

But not all leaders are bad. Leaders that are going to be on your side are going to be open to things or to keep the jury on the right track. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, people waive their right to a jury trial all the time to have a judge decide the case because they feel more comfortable with somebody deciding the case that is going to stick to the law more than let their emotions run wild or something like that. So there are cases where maybe you want to keep that lawyer. Maybe you want to keep defense counsel on the case,

Erich Vieth:

And if it’s a transactional lawyer not in the personal injury bar and your types of cases, they might not have strong feelings any which way on these kinds of cases.

Patrick McPhail:

Or maybe they do. Maybe they have a strong feeling they think you should win. A lot of it is a gut feeling. There’s no right or wrong decision as long as you’re making the best decision that you can with the information that you’ve got. And that’s why your job is to get information. You got to get information on people and jury selection to make the best decisions.

Erich Vieth:

Lemme take one more swipe at this idea of trying to get people to talk. Let them know these are from your notes. Let them know they’re doing the right thing by admitting bias, basically talking. Tell them to be the brave souls that the rest of the panel looks up to because they’re saying, here’s what I really think. They can lead the way and inspire others. But before that happens, what is your talk to them to try to say, I really need you to get in there and let us know what you’re thinking.

Patrick McPhail:

Well, the easiest way to do this is another thing that we learned from John. You build up the first person that is brave enough to raise their hand and say, yeah, I have a problem with this. You use that person to show everybody on the panel like, wow, holy cow, thank you so much. This is exactly what we’re looking for. This is not easy to do. What this person just said. You build up that first person.

Erich Vieth:

Even if they said your case sucks,

Patrick McPhail:

Especially if they said your case sucks. That is what you want to know. You don’t want to know the people that think your case is great and the defendant is terrible. Sit down please. If you want to stay on the panel, you go ahead and quiet down with that. No, your job is to find the people that think your case sucks before they ever heard anything about it. And you got to reward the people that are brave enough to stand up. And there’s usually, I mean, get a group of 60 people together. There’s going to be those people that have opinions about everything and you’re going to have people that don’t like your case no matter what. Don’t like plaintiff’s lawyers or something. It’ll be low hanging fruit really at the beginning because people will have no problem telling you they don’t like trial lawyers and you’re making our insurance rates go up and all kinds of other stuff.

The idea of getting people comfortable saying it, it’s the first person for sure. You make them the king of the panel, but it goes for every issue. Once you get somebody where you’re comfortable, they’re off for costs. Okay, easy peasy. Does anybody else here feel a little bit like juror number 11 where they have a little bit of trouble with this, even if it’s a little bit right? Just ease them into back going behind in line with the people that are brave enough to say the things that you need from them. You prop ’em up with other jurors, you prop ’em up with yourself a little bit. Like I said, you say yourself as an example, whether it’s the Rams or you don’t like just any issue. I mean, make it genuine. Like I said, there’s any number of things that everybody would be the wrong person.

You’re going to be the wrong person on this issue, this issue. If you feel strongly about it, use that as your example and tell ’em, don’t beat around the bush. Everybody here agree that it would be the right thing for me to do to raise my hand and say, yeah, I just have an issue with this case. I’m not going to be able to give a fair shake to this party or that party. So use yourself, use the brave jurors and people. Everybody wants to be part of a team no matter what. No matter what it is. Everybody wants to be part of a team. And if the team is, I hate plaintiff’s lawyers or the team, I don’t think that you should be able to bring a lawsuit for this subject matter, then all the better. Then you just follow the leader.

Erich Vieth:

We’ve had attorneys on the defense side here at the podcast. What do you think, is there anything fundamentally different about how a defense attorney handles for dyer attorney? Talk about a couple of those things.

Patrick McPhail:

Well, I mean, think about it. We started off saying that if you’re not doing a voir dire or you’re not doing a good voir dire, you’re rolling the dice. And just generally, that’s not going to work out for you because generally number one, you got the burden of proof. But number two, there’s people, better or worse, there’s a lot of bad opinions about trial lawyers and lawsuits in general. So if you’re just taking a random subset of the community, you’re going to get a lot of people that just aren’t right for that case in general. Well, if they’re not right for that case against us on the plaintiff side, then they’re going to be right for that case for the defense side. And so I think if I was a defendant, the defense attorney on the side, it would depend on what you hear from jurors, right?

Rehabilitation is key. You got to try, but you got to use your time wisely also to do what the plaintiff’s attorney should have been doing the whole time too, is getting the rapport. So following up questioning, I think is it’s got its advantages and disadvantages like everything else, right? Jurors are tired, they’ve already had to talk to somebody else, and you’re getting up there and you’re going to have to start over from fresh. That’s difficult. But you know who you want to target. You know who you want more information out of. As a defense attorney, I’d be going to those people that hadn’t talked yet and say, yeah, we didn’t get to hear from you, or they didn’t ask you questions. I wanted to know a little bit more about you just getting a rapport with people that you know are going to be on the jury.

That’s helpful because at that point, you pretty much know who the plaintiff has got offer your cause, right? And certainly at the front of the panel, you’re going to be seeing that person’s on the jury or that person’s likely on the jury, right? They’re just going to be three strikes from the plaintiff side. But you have a subset of people that you know are going to be on the jury minus the three. Talk to ’em, get good rapport, take advantage of that. If you’re a defense attorney, the people that you have a very good idea are going to be on that case and build that rapport.

Erich Vieth:

Could you say another thing or two about insulating? I mean, if you get the people who are going to be a problem to your case off, the rest might be good presumably, but do you do anything else to make sure they can’t be? You just got rid of 12 people that were harmful. Defense gets up and they do their thing and all of a sudden a flock of your good people disappear. So what can you do, if anything, to protect against that?

Patrick McPhail:

Well, there’s two things. You’re insulating against rehabilitation for the people that you got off for cause. So we already talked about that, the unequivocal assurances stuff, but insulating against cause strikes from the defense side is also key. So spend a little bit of time thinking about, well, if the defense was in your position here, what are the best facts for your case? Right? They might want to know, oh me, my client did this. Is that going to get, somebody else is never going to hear any word against the plaintiff knowing that the defendant did this. You’re never going to give my client a fair shake. So you anticipate those things. You don’t really have an opportunity though to insulate on individual facts that are like that because you’re really arguing your case. So the insulation is usually for general topics like sympathy. Sympathy is really a one that we focus on.

It’s kind of like the last topic that you want to hit. I usually hit it in every quad year. I like to tell everybody the time for sympathy. It’s passed. Sympathy is great. It’s really important to have as a person. It’s great to have as a person. I mean, nobody wants to say no sympathy is bad, but in this setting in a Courtroom, it’s not for sympathy. And does everybody here understand that my client here is not asking you for their sympathy? The time for sympathy is long gone. You might feel sympathetic. That’s okay. Everybody here okay with raising their hand and saying, I will not give a verdict for the plaintiff because I feel sympathetic, or I feel like they deserve this money just because something bad happened to ’em. No matter what, as long as you are getting out in front of that issue, then everybody’s going to agree with you.

Yeah, I’m not going to be able to put that aside. They’re not going to say, I can’t put that sympathy aside. The defense, they get up there and you didn’t let the jury know, I don’t want your sympathy. Okay, that’s what you got to let ’em know. You got to be kind of brutally honest about, I don’t want your sympathy. If they don’t know that it’s natural, people are going to be like, that guy lost his legs. How can I not feel sympathetic about that? How does that not go into my head? So you just tell ’em straight up, listen, that’s not what we’re here for. Is everybody okay with me telling you that time for sympathy has passed and we don’t want that? And I’m asking you right now to not give us a verdict based on your sympathy alone. We are not here for that.

Everybody’s going to be okay with it as long as you’re not trying to, I guess walk too cutely with it. You just got to tell ’em sympathy. That’s not what we’re here for. And we’re not asking you for a verdict based on sympathy. People are going to be fine with that. And that takes the wind out of any sails. Like the defense gets up there and says, well, I know you’re going to feel real sorry for them. Well, they already promised that that’s not going to be the basis of their decision. So then you’re good to come. For younger attorneys, ask for the opportunity to conduct voir as much as you can. It’s really, really difficult when you first start, but nothing like practice to be able to get you through it. And there’s nothing like real life to learn the lessons that you need.

Erich Vieth:

Good. This has been our second episode on Voirdire with Pat McPhail. Thanks for joining us for both those episodes.

Patrick McPhail:

Thank you.

Erich Vieth:

So this has been another episode of The Jury is Out. I’m Erich Veith. We’ll see you next time.

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