When the First Amendment was ratified in the U.S. Constitution over 200 years ago, it aimed to prevent government overreach by safeguarding free speech and other individual liberties. Since then, it has been warped into the right to say whatever you want without consequences. This has coincided with a shift from using the First Amendment to protect minority viewpoints to a more conservative perspective that believes political correctness has gone too far. Since the rise of the MAGA movement in 2016, supporters have become vocal advocates of free speech, citing concerns about media bias and online censorship. But political rhetoric

Report Shows Younger Professionals More Accepting of Trade Secret Sharing, While Occupation and Gender Significantly Impact Views on Intellectual Property Rights December 05, 2024, New York, NY — DOAR, the nation’s leading trial consulting company, today released findings from a comprehensive study examining attitudes toward trade secret protection and intellectual property rights across major IP litigation venues. The survey revealed significant generational and demographic differences in how potential jurors view the retention and sharing of confidential and technical information, with implications for both litigation strategy and corporate policy. The report, “A Study of Jurors’ Attitudes Toward Theft of Trade Secrets

Report Reveals Polarization Around First Amendment Arguments and Explains How Opinions Change Based on Personal Experiences October 31, 2024, New York – DOAR, the nation’s leading trial consulting company, today released important findings from a new study that measures how people of diverse demographics differ in their opinions on free speech and its application in legal contexts. The survey included questions regarding attitudes toward hate speech, online content moderation, and the application of First Amendment protections. The results highlight fundamental similarities and noteworthy differences among potential jurors in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. The study, “Perspectives on

May 14, 2024, New York, NY—DOAR, the nation’s leading trial consulting company, today released important findings from a new national study that examines several issues suspected of influencing jurors’ baseline attitudes toward pharmaceutical companies. The findings indicate that opinions of the pharmaceutical industry are generally favorable despite a prevailing view of it as profit-centric. The study also concludes that recent trends in certain types of drugs and vaccines have a meaningful impact on views of the industry. The study, conducted by the DOAR Research Center, sought to reflect a broad spectrum of community attitudes across the United States. It was

Authors: Chad Lackey, Ph.D. and Ellen Brickman, Ph.D. For years, the public viewed the pharmaceutical industry negatively, with public sentiment reaching its lowest levels in 2019. In Gallup’s annual survey of opinions about different industries, the pharmaceutical industry ranked dead last that year, with 58% viewing it negatively and only 27% viewing it positively. In fact, these ratings were the lowest since Gallup began assessing opinions of different industries in 2001. Some data suggest that public opinion of the pharmaceutical industry dramatically improved during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Gallup showed only a modest improvement of 7% gains in positive ratings

Jury selection in employment cases provide unique opportunities and challenges for litigators.  Employment cases differ from most other cases that come before a jury in that the majority of jurors come in with personal experience with employment.  They have been employees, employers or both.  In contrast to patent cases or securities litigation where we often hear juror concerns about being unqualified to render decisions, jurors in employment cases may actually overestimate their own qualifications for judging employment matters.  They can run the risk of letting their self-professed experience-based expertise outweigh the case facts and even the law in their

For the last six years, litigators have pondered the question: Have jurors changed in the wake of the Trump era? Our nation underwent cataclysmic shifts in values and ideologies after Trump’s election in 2016 and became polarized on key social and political issues in unprecedented ways. As issues of racial, gender, and economic inequality rose to the forefront of our national consciousness, many wondered how these would affect the judgments that diverse groups of jurors make about white-collar defendants who are typically (though not always) White, male and wealthy. Do the assumptions about favorable defense jurors often held by white-collar defense lawyers continue

Upended again, predominant venues for patent litigation have become increasingly difficult to predict. First, the 2017 TC Heartland decision effectively put an end to the dominance of Marshall’s Rocket Docket. Patent cases filed in the Eastern District of Texas dropped from 1,665 in 2016 to 505 in 2018. Then, following Judge Albright’s appointment in 2018, the Waco Division of the Western District of Texas became the new hub of patent litigation. In 2021, the number of patent cases in his courtroom totaled over 900, which comprised nearly 20% of all patent litigation filed in that year.[1] However, in July, an

In the first part of this series, I attempted to assuage our fears of what is lost by conducting jury selection virtually by identifying what we have gained from this new medium. In the second and final part of this series, I address the concern with jurors’ ability to evaluate the credibility of witnesses who testify remotely or are wearing masks (i.e., in a socially distanced courtroom), as well as to empathize with them and ensure due process (i.e., honor the presumption of innocence). Drawing again upon theory and anecdote, I demonstrate that our fears are much less palpable than originally

As pandemic restrictions start to ease up across the country, it is a good time to evaluate the way courts handled trials during the pandemic and what we can learn from that going forward.  While many trials were postponed, a small number of venues (particularly at the state and local levels) took the bold step of conducting virtual trials on civil matters during the pandemic. This experiment with virtual trials may feel like a temporary solution to what was a temporary problem. But should it be? One of the greatest concerns that attorneys, judges, and legal scholars have expressed in