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A common misconception is that you pick a jury. You don't really.

What you do is get a random collection of people in a room. Then you figure out who you DO NOT WANT on the jury. If you have a justified reason, you can disqualify a potential juror. It might be because they know one side or the other personally, they may have experiences like what the parties have been through, or you just might not like them. You don't get to dump all of them. You only have a limited number you can try to get rid of.

The whole time you are getting rid of the people you don't want, the other side is doing the same thing. The problem is, anyone you really liked, they don't. So they will likely dump everyone you really wanted to keep. The end result, you get the first six or twelve (depending on the court you are in) jurors who nobody cared enough to get rid of.

These jurors likely didn't want to be there in the first place, they don't really have any similar experiences to draw on, and they just want to go home. That's right! Your case is going to be decided by a group of strangers who don't know anything about you, your case, and really don't care either way.

Now, I don't want to knock jurors. Something magical does happen after a jury is sworn in. They always rise to the challenge. They really do care about doing the right thing. They take their task seriously. Rarely do I find myself at odds with a jury's decisions. Jurors are a special group of people tasked with an unusual job, and they do marvelously at it.

But for my clients, the reality of how you pick a jury is always an eye opener. I warn them of the process long before we ever file suit. Everyone wants to tell their story to the jury. Everyone is convinced they could swing a jury to see their point of view. In part, this is because everyone thinks the jury will be made up of people just like them. It isn't very likely given the system. I tell my clients to go to a Wal-Mart (a place almost everyone shops) and look at the first twelve people to walk in the door behind them. That random group is just as likely to be the jury as any other group of twelve. Some will be barely adults, others will be advanced seniors. Some will be from almost every conceivable ethnicity. There will be executives, office workers, blue-collar workers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, sanitation workers...

After you look at the first twelve, consider what you think they would think of you, your story, the other side, and what is fair and reasonable. Young people are usually more liberal than older people, but young people think $1,000.00 is a lot of money, while a mother of three might think $1,000.00 is a month's groceries or less. Some may have been or known a drunk driver, they might be more or less sympathetic if there was a drunk defendant in the case. If you are upset that the person that hurt you was on their cell phone when the accident happened, odds are every person you looked at does the same thing. If you thought that car shouldn't have pushed the yellow light as it went red, odds are again several of that twelve do it every day.

As much as we all think our story is undeniable, and our claim a no-brainer, odds are somebody out there will see it all very differently.

It was interesting to see two vastly different views on the past tort reform efforts in Texas being reviewed almost simultaneously. In support of tort reform efforts was and commentary made May 2, by Perryman Group (I’d direct link the article for you, but the link always goes back to their main page http://www.perrymangroup.com/ , go to the news publications and then commentary, its entitled “A Texas Turnaround”). The contrary position was stated in this article from Fox News.

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