Yes. Lawyers do research jurors, and in most modern trials they are expected to. What used to be reserved for high-profile cases has become routine, largely because so much information about ordinary people is now public and searchable. The research starts before voir dire and continues through jury selection, feeding directly into the decisions attorneys make about which jurors to keep and which to strike.
What Lawyers Are Trying to Find
The point of juror research is to identify anything that suggests a prospective juror might lean one way before hearing evidence. Three categories dominate.
The first is strongly held beliefs connected to the issues at trial. In a product liability case against a large corporation, an attorney will hunt for public statements about corporate accountability or consumer advocacy. In a criminal case, posts about policing or the justice system carry obvious weight.
The second is life experience. Attorneys want to know whether a prospective juror has been a plaintiff or defendant in a prior lawsuit, has been the victim of a crime like the one on trial, or has gone through bankruptcy or serious financial hardship. The experiences of close family members count too. A spouse’s bad experience with an insurance company or a sibling’s criminal conviction can shape how someone weighs evidence.
The third is affiliations. Membership in political organizations, advocacy groups, professional associations, or religious institutions all hint at worldview. Social media activity is especially useful here, because people share opinions online that they would never volunteer in a courtroom.
Where the Information Comes From
The jury questionnaire is the starting point. Courts require prospective jurors to complete these forms before selection, and they cover basics like occupation, education, marital status, and prior jury service. Lawyers treat the questionnaire as a foundation, not a finished picture.
From there, public records fill in the gaps. Legal teams run court database searches for a prospective juror’s litigation history, both civil and criminal. Property records and bankruptcy filings are publicly accessible and routinely pulled.
Social media is the single most productive channel. Attorneys and their staff review public profiles on Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and other platforms, scanning posts, photos, group memberships, and comment histories. In complex or high-value trials, firms also hire professional jury consultants who combine public data with social science methods to profile the panel and anticipate how particular jurors might respond to trial themes.
Why Juror Research Is Now Expected
Doing this work is not just permitted. There is a growing expectation within the profession that competent trial preparation requires it. Courts have observed that as technology makes public information easier to reach, the burden shifts to the parties to surface juror issues early rather than seek a new trial afterward. Attorneys have been criticized for failing to investigate jurors when the tools were readily available.
The American Bar Association addressed the practice directly in Formal Opinion 466, which treats passive review of a juror’s internet presence as a permissible part of jury selection.1American Bar Association. ABA Formal Opinion 466 – Lawyer Reviewing Jurors’ Internet Presence A lawyer who walks into voir dire having done no background research is at a disadvantage, and may be providing substandard representation.
What Lawyers Are Not Allowed to Do
The hard line is contact. ABA Model Rule 3.5 forbids lawyers from communicating with a prospective juror outside official court proceedings.2American Bar Association. Model Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 3.5 – Impartiality and Decorum of the Tribunal On social media that means no friend request, no direct message, and no LinkedIn connection request to a prospective juror. Using a fake profile to see someone’s private posts is also prohibited. Research has to stay passive. Look, don’t interact.
A common question is what happens when a platform automatically notifies the juror that someone viewed their profile, as LinkedIn does. Formal Opinion 466 concluded that this notification is a function of the platform, not a communication from the lawyer, and does not violate Rule 3.5.1American Bar Association. ABA Formal Opinion 466 – Lawyer Reviewing Jurors’ Internet Presence Not every judge agrees. Some have sanctioned firms for LinkedIn research precisely because of the notification feature.
Judge-Specific Orders
Individual judges can impose rules stricter than the ethics baseline. A judge might issue a standing order barring attorneys from viewing jurors’ social media or limit research to certain public records. Violating that kind of order can bring financial sanctions or a disciplinary referral to the state bar, no matter what the ABA rules otherwise permit.
Anonymous Juries
In cases involving organized crime, likely juror intimidation, or intense public attention, a court may empanel an anonymous jury where names, addresses, and sometimes occupations are withheld from the attorneys. That effectively ends most pre-trial research. Courts reserve anonymous juries for situations with a credible risk of tampering or harassment, weighing juror safety against the defendant’s right to a thorough voir dire.
How the Research Gets Used
Everything learned through research feeds into voir dire, the questioning phase of jury selection. A lawyer who has done the homework can skip generic questions and ask targeted follow-ups. If a prospective juror has posted extensively about police misconduct, the attorney in a criminal case can probe during voir dire whether that person can fairly evaluate testimony from law enforcement witnesses.
Two tools then remove jurors from the panel. A for-cause challenge asks the judge to dismiss a juror who has shown actual bias or an inability to be impartial. A public post expressing strong prejudice about the central issue in the case can supply the evidence a for-cause challenge needs, and there is no cap on how many a lawyer may make.3United States Courts. Juror Selection Process
Peremptory challenges work differently. They let an attorney remove a juror without stating a reason, but each side gets only a fixed number set by statute or court rule.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1870 – Challenges Because peremptories are scarce, research helps lawyers spend them where they matter most instead of guessing.
The Discrimination Limit on Strikes
No stated reason does not mean any reason. The Supreme Court held in Batson v. Kentucky that the Equal Protection Clause forbids using peremptory challenges to exclude jurors based on race.5Justia Law. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 US 79 (1986) J.E.B. v. Alabama extended the same prohibition to gender-based strikes.6Justia Law. J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 US 127 (1994)
When a Batson challenge is raised, the lawyer who made the strike has to offer a race- or gender-neutral explanation, and the judge decides whether it is genuine or a pretext. Courts look at demeanor, plausibility, and consistency. If a lawyer struck a Black juror for being a teacher but left a white teacher on the panel, that inconsistency is strong evidence of a Batson violation.
Juror research cuts both ways here. Thorough background work gives lawyers legitimate, case-specific reasons for their strikes, which makes Batson challenges harder to sustain. But when research turns up nothing unusual and the lawyer strikes a juror anyway, the absence of a documented reason can make a Batson challenge easier to prove.
AI Tools and Jury Consultants
Consulting firms increasingly use artificial intelligence and data analytics to score potential jurors, pulling together public records, social media, and demographics to predict how individuals might vote. These tools can process far more data than a human team, but they carry a distinct risk. If an algorithm’s recommendations track with race, gender, or another protected characteristic, following them can produce the same discrimination Batson prohibits.
The ABA addressed this in Formal Opinion 517, which reinforces that a lawyer may not follow a client’s directive, a consultant’s advice, or an AI tool’s recommendation to exercise peremptory challenges when the lawyer knows or reasonably should know the conduct would amount to unlawful juror discrimination.7American Bar Association. ABA Issues Formal Ethics Opinion on Discrimination in the Jury Selection Process The opinion also imposes a duty of inquiry. When a consultant or AI tool suggests a strike and the stated reasons could be pretextual, a competent lawyer has to investigate rather than accept the recommendation on its face. If a reasonably prudent lawyer would recognize the suggested strike as discriminatory, the lawyer has to decline it, whatever the software says. The person exercising the challenge bears personal responsibility for the result.