A jury consultant is a trained behavioral scientist who helps trial lawyers pick jurors, test their arguments before trial, prepare witnesses to testify, and interpret what jurors do after a verdict. Most hold graduate degrees in psychology, sociology, or communications, and they apply that research background to predict how ordinary people will react to evidence, witnesses, and legal themes. The field has grown into a multimillion-dollar industry since the 1970s, and it operates with no licensing requirements at all.
What a Jury Consultant Does
The work spans several stages of a case. Some consultants handle all of them; others specialize.
Pretrial Research
Before trial, consultants run mock trials and focus groups to stress-test the legal team’s case. A mock trial seats a panel of recruited participants who hear condensed versions of both sides’ arguments and then deliberate to a verdict. Lawyers watch from behind one-way glass or on video, looking for which arguments land, which witnesses seem credible, and where the narrative breaks down.
Focus groups are smaller and less structured, often used to probe a single question like damages or liability. Community attitude surveys fill out the toolkit by measuring public sentiment in the trial venue, which matters most when media coverage has shaped the jury pool.
Jury Selection
This is where most people picture a consultant working. During voir dire, consultants sit with the legal team and help evaluate each prospective juror. They draft supplemental questionnaires designed to surface biases that casual questioning misses, and they watch for nonverbal signals during live questioning.
They also help lawyers decide which prospective jurors to remove with peremptory challenges. Each side gets a limited number of those strikes, and they are subject to constitutional limits: under Batson v. Kentucky, a lawyer cannot use peremptories to remove jurors based on race, and courts have extended that protection to gender and ethnicity.1Justia Law. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) A consultant helps use those limited strikes strategically while staying within the rules.
Online Juror Research
Nearly every consultant now folds social media screening into voir dire preparation. They review prospective jurors’ publicly available profiles for political leanings, personal interests, group affiliations, and anything that might signal hidden bias.
The American Bar Association addressed the practice in Formal Opinion 466, concluding that passive review of a juror’s public online presence is ethically permissible, but sending a connection or friend request is prohibited ex parte communication.2American Bar Association. Voir Dire Becomes Voir Google: Ethical Concerns of 21st Century Jury Selection The harder question involves platforms that automatically notify users when someone views their profile. The ABA concluded that an automated notification is not a communication from the lawyer, though some courts have stricter local rules that prohibit research methods triggering any notification.
Witness Preparation
Courtroom testimony is an unnatural form of communication. Witnesses face rigid questioning, hostile cross-examination, and an audience of strangers judging every word. Consultants coach witnesses on how to listen to questions carefully, keep composure under pressure, and present their testimony clearly. The goal is not to change what a witness says but to narrow the gap between what the witness knows and what the jury actually hears. That work happens in rehearsal sessions before depositions and trial.
Post-Trial Juror Interviews
After the verdict, consultants sometimes interview willing jurors to learn how the deliberations went. These conversations reveal which arguments mattered, which evidence confused the jury, and whether any strategic choices backfired. The information helps evaluate grounds for appeal and refines strategy for future cases. Rules on post-trial contact vary by jurisdiction, and judges hold authority to grant or deny permission. Some courts allow post-trial interviews only when investigating potential juror misconduct.
When Hiring a Jury Consultant Is Worth It
Not every case justifies the expense. Consultants are most commonly retained in three situations:
- High-stakes litigation, where tens of millions of dollars are on the line and the consultant’s fee is small next to the cost of losing. Major product liability, patent, and wrongful death cases fit here.
- Technically complex cases, where scientific evidence, financial fraud, or specialized industry practices need to be translated into arguments a jury can follow.
- Emotionally charged or high-profile cases, where media coverage or sensitive subject matter means jurors arrive with strong preexisting attitudes that a legal team needs to understand.
Criminal defense teams in capital cases also use consultants heavily, because the sentencing phase often turns on jurors’ emotional response to mitigation evidence rather than strict legal analysis.
What a Jury Consultant Costs
Costs vary widely with the scope of work. A consultant helping with voir dire strategy on a straightforward civil case may charge a few thousand dollars. A full engagement with mock trials, community surveys, witness preparation, and in-court jury selection support can run well into six figures.
Industry estimates put mock trial costs at roughly $10,000 to $60,000 or more, with a significant share going to recruit and pay mock jurors, who typically earn $150 to $300 per day. Smaller focus groups cost less, usually starting around $10,000 to $15,000 for a reliable study.
Hourly rates depend on experience and market. Published rate schedules from federal courts have listed approved jury consultant rates in the range of $150 to $225 per hour, though private-sector rates in major markets often run higher. With no licensing and no standardized fee structure, rates vary and comparison shopping is common.
Credentials and Oversight
Jury consulting is not a licensed profession. No state requires certification, board approval, or a specific degree. Anyone can hang out a shingle, which makes vetting credentials important. Most established consultants hold advanced degrees in psychology, sociology, or a related social science and have years of courtroom experience behind them.
The closest thing to self-regulation is the American Society of Trial Consultants, the primary professional organization in the field. ASTC maintains a Professional Code covering jury selection, witness preparation, small group research, post-trial juror interviews, online research, and visual communication.3American Society of Trial Consultants. Professional Code The code is enforceable against ASTC members through a grievance committee but has no legal force over non-members. Both members and non-members can file grievances, but a consultant who never joins the organization faces no professional oversight beyond client relationships and courtroom reputation.
Confidentiality and Work Product Protection
Jury consulting work is normally shielded by the work product doctrine. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(4)(D), a party generally cannot discover facts known or opinions held by an expert retained in anticipation of litigation who is not expected to testify at trial.4Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26 – Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery Because jury consultants are non-testifying consulting experts, their research, analyses, and recommendations are normally protected from discovery by the opposing side. A court can order disclosure only when the requesting party shows exceptional circumstances that make it impractical to get the same facts or opinions by other means.
The protection has a hard boundary. If a consultant is later designated as a testifying expert, the shield drops, and their opinions, notes, and communications with the legal team become discoverable. Legal teams keep this in mind and generally hold jury consultants in a purely advisory role.
Practical confidentiality also depends on proper paperwork. Mock jurors and focus group participants sign nondisclosure agreements before seeing case material. Written confidentiality clauses in the consulting contract itself matter too, because courts have denied privilege claims where the hiring party failed to formalize those expectations in writing.
Do Jury Consultants Actually Work?
The honest answer is that the evidence is mixed. The industry points to high-profile wins and internal data suggesting their involvement improves outcomes, but independent academic research has not produced a clear consensus. The core difficulty is methodological: no one can try the same case twice with and without a consultant, so measuring their precise effect on any single verdict is nearly impossible.
Where consultants appear to add the most measurable value is in pretrial research rather than jury selection itself. Mock trials and focus groups give legal teams feedback they would not otherwise get, often revealing blind spots in a case narrative or witnesses who do not connect with laypeople. That diagnostic function can reshape trial strategy in ways that clearly matter, even if the effect is hard to isolate statistically. Jury selection assistance is harder to evaluate, partly because attorneys bring substantial judgment of their own and partly because the jury pool in any given case limits what any selection strategy can accomplish.
The most candid consultants frame their work as risk reduction rather than verdict insurance. In a case worth $50 million, spending $75,000 to learn that a key argument confuses people, or that an expert witness comes across as arrogant, is valuable on its own terms, whether or not the final verdict can be traced back to the consultant.