Sunday, October 12, 2008

Learning Voir Dire From The O.J. Trial

Anne Reed, the lawyer and jury consultant who writes the Deliberations blog, has some great ideas for improving your voir dire skills. CNN posted the completed juror questionnaires from O.J. Simpson's robbery trial, and Anne suggests that you can, first, use the questionnaires to think about drafting your own, since some of the questions are "particularly well designed to get direct information about jurors' specific experiences and conduct." Deliberations: Learning Voir Dire From The O.J. Trial, Oct. 8, 2008.

Second, for as good a voir dire training exercise as you're ever likely to find, print the twelve questionnaires out and practice with them, with a group if possible. What if these twelve people were the venire instead of the final group, and you had to pick a jury of six?

If you're like most lawyers, this project will be harder than you expected.


For other juror questionnaires, see Deliberations' library of sample juror questionnaires -- a wonderful resource.

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