The flexibility of online services gives legal professionals the means to elevate their mock trials to build effective strategies for their court cases. Aside from relying on live web presentations to continue mock trial operations in the new normal, you can also utilize an online bulletin board set up to implement a self-paced approach to your surveys and questionnaires. Here are a few advantages you can benefit from when you choose to supplement your live presentations with online bulletin boards:

1. More Diversity and Depth of Feedback

When you choose to supplement your live presentations with online bulletin boards, you give your participants more time to complete your surveys and questionnaires. This allows them to compose their thoughts carefully without the rush of trying to complete feedback forms before the deadline. By giving them more wiggle room to really consider their answers to your prompts and case arguments, you end up obtaining more thought-out insights that participants may miss if they were filling out feedback in a hurry. 

2. Incentivizes You To Narrow Down Your Presentations

In a virtual setting, attention spans are noticeably shorter to maintain as opposed to in physical settings. 20 minutes is generally the soft spot your presentations should aim for if you want to keep your participants engaged and alert. This timeframe motivates you to keep your presentations to the bare necessities. You can always make use of the advantages of an online bulletin board to provide multiple 20-minute presentations rather than a longer presentation that would end up being too difficult to digest.

3. Broken Down Presentations Allow For Specific Feedback Opportunities

When you provide shorter presentations, you also have the ability to present surveys and questionnaires before you move on to the next phase. Once a presentation is over, you can ask for immediate feedback while the details are still fresh in the minds of the participants. You could even subdivide your presentations to very specific themes in your argument to filter out what works in your favor and what can be used against you. Once you’ve defined what works, you’ll end up with a much stronger case and arguments overall. Most online bulletin board platforms let you implement feedback forms in phases which allows you to ask for the thoughts of your participants when it's most convenient for your analysis and insights.

4. Profiling Opportunities By Having More Participants

With online mock jury trials, accommodation and travel costs don’t need to be accounted for. You can conduct the whole process from any location with a stable internet connection and participant jurors can do the same. Without the physical restrictions of setting size, you can even choose to have more mock jurors present for your setup. By having more mock jurors, you are able to tap into more demographics for their feedback which you can then use to analyze for trends that may be reoccurring in particular groups. Once those trends are determined, you are able to use that to your advantage once the Voir Dire jury selection takes place on the actual day of the trial itself. When you compliment your online mock jury trials with an online bulletin board, accessibility is increased further as most platforms are browser-based and require no complicated application installations.

5. Recruit Participant Jurors Without Geographical and Time Restrictions

Representation is a major factor in actual trials. Larger jurisdictions will often recruit jurors from a wide geographic area and provide them accommodations during the duration of their stay for the trial. This cost is often hard to justify when conducting physical mock trials as the main goal of legal professionals conducting these setups is to obtain tangible insights through simulated means. The way these insights affect the overall outcome of the trial proper may vary which makes it difficult to shell out funds quantifiably. Online mock trials supplemented with online bulletin boards allow you to alleviate those costs as attendance can be completed at home. This allows you to obtain sample sizes that more accurately represent the geographic diversity that you’d encounter in the actual trial.

Choose Civicom Mock Jury Trials Online For Your Live Presentations and Online Bulletin Board Setup

Mock Jury Trials Online is a service of Civicom Research Services group that offers web-enabled solutions for legal professionals looking to practice their case arguments, pinpoint its strengths & areas of improvement, and predict issues that can possibly occur during the trial proper. Clients can choose a live presentation approach using Civicom CyberFacility^® and an online bulletin board approach with Civicom ChatterBox™. We also provide juror recruitment, translations, transcriptions, and a project curation system for a seamless online mock jury trial experience.

If you want to read more about how we combine live presentations with an asynchronous approach, check out our case study on Asynchronous or Live Presentation for Mock Jury Trials.