Predicting Civil Jury Verdicts: How Attorneys Use (and Misuse) a Second Opinion

Abstract

When predicting potential jury verdicts, trial attorneys often seek second opinions from other attorneys. But how much weight do they give to these opinions, and how optimally do they use them? In a four‐round estimation task developed by Liberman et al. (under review), pairs of law students and pairs of experienced trial attorneys estimated actual jury verdicts. When participants were given access to a partner's estimates, participants' accuracy improved in both groups. However, participants in both groups underweighted their partners' estimates relative to their own, with experienced attorneys giving less weight to their partners' opinions than did law students. In doing so, participants failed to reap the full benefits of statistical aggregation. In both groups, requiring partners to reach agreement on a joint estimate improved accuracy. This benefit was then largely retained when participants gave final individual estimates. In a further analysis, we randomly sampled estimates of various‐sized groups. The accuracy of mean estimates substantially increased as group size increased, with the largest relative benefit coming from the first additional estimate. We discuss the implications of these findings for the legal profession and for the study of individual versus collective estimation.

From the Fundamental Attribution Error to the Truly Fundamental Attribution Error and Beyond: My Research Journey

“…In the studies we conducted in Israel (Liberman, Minson, Bryan, & Ross, 2011), students made estimates of political opinions (e.g., the percentage of classmates willing to see Israel give up the Golan Heights) or demographic facts (e.g., the Druze population of Israel). The studies we conducted in the United States included students estimating demographic and economic facts, but they also included ballroom dancers estimating the scores they would receive from judges (Minson, Liberman, & Ross, 2011) and lawyers and law students estimating the awards to plaintiffs in tort cases (Jacobson, Dobbs-Marsh, Liberman, & Minson, 2011).…”

The epistemic bases of changes of opinion and choices: The joint effects of the need for cognitive closure, ascribed epistemic authority and quality of advice

“…Stephan (2011), andStephan andChenoweth (2008), believe that violence is the necessary course of action against those in power.…”

“…The consequences of discounting other people's opinions are often detrimental to many areas of human activity, leading to suboptimal individual choices (e.g., Yaniv et al, 2011), inaccurate business decisions (e.g., Önkal et al, 2017), and biased jury verdicts (e.g., Jacobson et al, 2011). However, despite the obvious harmfulness of this intellectual rigidity in refusing to change one's opinion, the psychological factors underlying it are still poorly understood (Rader et al, 2017).…”

The Effect of Blinded Experts on Juror Verdicts

“…Thus, the predictability of jury decisions may be improved, which would be an important benefit for litigators (Jacobson et al. ).…”

“…In these conditions, the party with the blind expert is likely to receive very favorable initial votes from a sample of 12 jurors, and also has some assurance that the outcome of deliberations will reflect this initial distribution. Thus, the predictability of jury decisions may be improved, which would be an important benefit for litigators ( Jacobson et al 2011).…”