While negligence is at the heart of personal injury claims at trial, negligence is not always at the heart of decisions to settle. Harris and colleagues (2006) examined settlement decisions in medical malpractice litigation, and studied the importance of the witness potential of the defendant physician, the witness potential of the plaintiff, and the reputation of the plaintiff's attorney...

Voir dire, especially in federal courts, is often limited to demographic information such as residence, age, marital status, occupation, spouse's occupation, children's ages and occupations, and prior jury service. At times, questioning is expanded beyond this demographic information to jurors' experiences, attitudes, habits, and tendencies that are case-related (and sometimes more generally). Moran and colleagues (1990) examined the effect of minimal versus extended voir dire ...

Demographic factors such as gender, age, occupation, marital status, education, and income generally have only a minor influence on verdicts. Hastie and colleagues (1983) examined the backgrounds and verdict inclinations of over 800 prospective Boston jurors...

Prospective jurors are often asked directive questions in voir dire. Directive questions tell jurors the answer and ask for affirmation, rather than asking for jurors' thoughts. Examples of directive questions include:...

Some people involved in litigation have prior criminal convictions. Attorneys can ignore this information or "inoculate" against it by raising the issue and refuting it in some way. One strategy is to raise the issue of a person's prior record in voir dire and ask jurors to overlook the prior record as they decide the current case. Reinard and Arsenault (2000) investigated whether asking jurors in voir dire to overlook a defendant's prior criminal record was an effective means of encouraging jurors not to focus on the prior record...

Prior jury service, either civil or criminal, has a modest influence on verdicts in criminal trials. Himelein and colleagues (1991) studied 143 criminal trials...

Exposing inconsistencies in a witness' testimony can affect verdicts, but not always. Berman and Cutler (1996) investigated the exposure of inconsistencies in testimony through cross-examination of a prosecution eyewitness...

Wells and colleagues (1979) explored how the type of question an attorney asks in cross-examination - leading or non-leading - affects whether jurors believe a witness...

Criminal defendants who take their cases to trial face high conviction rates, regardless of who defends them. Harlow (2000) reviewed criminal cases in U.S. district courts and the 75 largest counties in the U.S...

Often, White jurors are more lenient to White defendants, and Black jurors more lenient to Black defendants. These "in-group" racial preferences can dissipate or reverse when jurors want to distance themselves from, rather than align themselves with, a defendant...