Of jelly beans and bored jurors

January 16, 2008

Trial lawyer/jury consultant Anne Reed offers this tasty morsel for trial lawyers (and anyone else who feels duty-bound to repeat themselves): “The Jelly Bean theory of keeping jurors’ attention.”

“When you need jurors to understand new and complicated facts or concepts, you have a problem:  you need to repeat the material more than once, but when you do, you’re punished for it,” the Milwaukee-based Reed posts on the blog of our sister paper, the Wisconsin Law Journal. “A new and seemingly unrelated study suggests a path between the rock and the hard place.”

In essence, study participants were asked to eat a jelly bean; actually, 22 jelly beans, one by one. Those who were asked to eat “a” jelly bean quickly got bored, but those who were asked to eat, say, a “cherry” jelly bean, followed by a “tangerine” jelly bean, then a peach or strawberry jelly bean, cleaned their plates and were ready for more.

The study’s author, Joseph P. Redden at the University of Minnesota, calls this “categorization.” Reed calls them “segments” and says: “Jurors think in segments anyway, so the simple act of dividing the material up will help them absorb it.  If you label the segments too, they might even start looking forward to the parts of the trial where you’re the one standing up.”

If Reed is right, the devil may not be the only thing in the details. The key to your next win could be lurking there, as well.

BARBARA GRZINCIC, Managing Editor/Law 

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Posted by Jackie Sauter | Filed Under jurors, law 

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