There’s something unnerving about placing your fate in the hands of twelve strangers. While the people in the jury box of U.S. courtrooms are referred to as “peers,” they can easily turn into enemies if evidence and witness testimony is presented in a dim light.
For those who find themselves wishing to foresee the outcome of a trial by jury, Jason Bloom, founder and president of Bloom Strategic Consulting, Inc., says he has the shiny crystal ball.
Operating with a 90 percent accuracy rate, Bloom has tested his studies on 350 cases since launching the TrialMode section of his company in 2008. The company uses a combination of mock trials and detailed focus groups to determine underlying factors as to how and why jury members arrive at a certain verdict. To determine what decision a jury might come to, Bloom focuses on every aspect of the case from the jury point of view.
“What I’ve really learned and what’s still fascinating to me is that there is a gap probably the size of an ocean between what lawyers and witnesses want to tell juries and what these juries actually want to see, hear and care about towards making their ultimate decisions and rendering verdicts,” said Bloom in a press release.
Any help in penetrating the psyche of jurors is useful, Baltimore trial attorney Jerry Tarud told the AFRO. “Jurors can look at the facts of the case, but a lot of them take their own experiences and apply them in the case,” said Jerry Tarud. “A lot of psychology goes into the studying and the understanding of a jury. The goal of each attorney is to direct an argument that a jury can empathize with and understand” He said understanding juries and being able to predict verdicts “is monumental” as a tool for defense attorneys.
Through TrialMode, a “legal laboratory,” clients can benefit from courtroom communication training, preparation for witness testimony, and a variety of other skills beneficial to successfully ending a court case. The company uses science and strategic planning; to predict which way a jury will go. Bloom also uses a full-scale mock courtroom to finely comb over facts to be presented before the twelve men and women who will ultimately come to a decision of guilt or innocence.
“Juries are like icebergs – what you see above water is the demographics; age, ethnicity and gender,” said Bloom. “However, below the water are attitudes, life experiences and predispositions which are more predictive to the outcome of a case.”
Bloom Strategic Consulting, Inc. originally began in 2007 and is based in Dallas, Texas. Bloom holds 15 years of jury consultation experience and has dedicated over 12,000 hours to studying every aspect of the courtroom from juries to trial lawyers.
For more information, please visit www.bloomstrategy.com
