Positive & Negative Effects of Social Media in the U.S. Social media companies have been at the center of a years-long firestorm since before the 2016 US Presidential Election. Though the user base for these platforms continues to shrink, millions of users still log on to these platforms per day. This suggests social media might […]
Read moreOur Recent Research
Public Opinions of Companies
Frequent Targets of Unfair or Anticompetitive Behavior Claims About a third of our cases involve large companies – sometimes we’re working with them, sometimes against them. Many of these companies are often targets of unfair or anticompetitive behavior claims. In pretrial research on those cases, we’ve often found that mock jurors with negative views about […]
Read moreFive Advantages of Online Mock Trials
Five Advantages of Online Mock Trials In the age of social distancing and Zoom jury trials, many legal professionals have had to adjust the way they work. Many of the research tasks that we used to conduct in person have moved online. One of the ways we’ve adjusted to the pandemic is by conducting our mock […]
Read moreFour Disadvantages of Online Mock Trials
Four Disadvantages of Online Mock Trials Because of the coronavirus, many of our interactive research activities – like mock trials and focus groups – have switched to an online format. In many ways, the pandemic merely hastened a transition from in-person or analogue ways of conducting research, to an online and digitized medium. For example, […]
Read moreUpcoming Antitrust Research
We are drafting a 1000 respondent national survey on antitrust issues, focusing on the recent Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice cases against Facebook and Google. However, our interest in goes beyond these lawsuits. Given the cataclysmic events of 2020, we want to get a better understanding of the historical moment we’re now in, and […]
Read moreWho is Willing to Show Up for Jury Service During a Pandemic?
Our COVID-19 survey focused on understanding the characteristics of those who were more likely to show up in court if they were called to serve as a juror during the pandemic. Our results indicate that there are unique pandemic-related, social, and political characteristics of people who are comfortable with jury service in a pandemic. One […]
Read moreCourthouse Safety Protocols for Pandemic Protections
Courthouse Safety Protocols for Pandemic Protections Bonora Rountree conducted a survey in July seeking to understand which safety protocols were most important to potential jurors. The survey included the protocols that are most often used in COVID-19 safety surveys (for example, masks, temperature screenings, wide availability of hand sanitizers) and added two jury-specific safety protocols […]
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Implicit Bias: Process & Remedies
We’ve encountered, and contended with, implicit bias in our work as trial consultants. Some clients are curious as to how implicit bias works and how we can counteract it. In our other posts, we cover practical and academic aspects of implicit bias including how biases impact bench trials, jury trials, and arbitration. In the following […]
Read moreAre Jurors Comfortable with Serving Jury Duty in a Courthouse During the Pandemic?
Are Jurors Comfortable with Serving Jury Duty in a Courthouse During the Pandemic? In July, Bonora Rountree commissioned a survey to explore California residents’ views about their willingness to serve as jurors during the pandemic, and the conditions under which they would be willing to serve as jurors. The survey was conducted online, and included […]
Read moreOnline Jury Questionnaires Make Sense…Especially During the Pandemic
Our firm has experiences selecting online juries for actual trials. We used our experiences with online jury selections to inform the content of a survey we conducted with 295 jury-eligible California residents. From those two sources, we’ve learned a lot about how jurors feel about participating in online jury service, and how they feel about […]
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