What Juries Really Think: Practical Guidance for Trial Lawyers

This article was originally published in the Cornell Law Review. Any opinions in this article are not those of Winston & Strawn or its clients; the opinions in this article are the authors’ opinions only.

What do juries really think about lawyers? What makes jurors tick? What do lawyers do that irritates jurors? What can lawyers do better in the courtroom from the jury’s perspective? These are the questions at the heart of this article, which provides useful insight gleaned from more than 500 jurors who served in federal district court trials in Chicago, Illinois from 2011 to 2017. In this article, Amy J. St. Eve and Gretchen Scavo present an analysis of questionnaire responses from those jurors, as well as their verbatim commentary, and distill both into practical guidance for trial attorneys looking to improve their trial skills.