
Apply HN: Jury Board – helping attorneys win cases through jury selection - ratliffchrisb
Problem:  Scientific jury selection is limited to the largest firms usually making over hundreds of millions of dollars a year.  When selecting juries, attorneys of other, smaller, firms have only the information they get through asking questions to make their selection.  This can be greatly improved by providing attorneys with a tool that allows them to do data mining from social media and any other sources and aggregate it to a probability of how that juror is likely to vote.<p>A tool that gives an attorney more insight into jurors would be incredibly valuable to them.  If you have millions on the line, paying even a few hundred to get information about a potential jury is a bargain.<p>While giving one attorney a strong advantage, thereby effecting the outcome of a case, can seem questionable, the justice system designed jury selection to be in the lose&#x2F;lose quadrant of possible scenarios.  Ideally a more equitable and fair jury is chosen by both attorneys eliminating those against them as best they can.  This also means though should one attorney have an effective tool selecting jurors others are highly incentivized to use that same tool.  This should produce a strong network effect for my product.
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kjksf
How does that actually work? Do lawyers get names and addresses of potential
jurors in advance? How much in advance? Assuming they do, what exactly do you
do with that information?

Let's say the juror is "Joe Smith from Alabama". What is the probability that:

1\. he has a twitter account

2\. he provided his full name in the account

3\. Which of the following accounts belong to that particular Joe Smith:
[https://twitter.com/search?f=users&q=joe%20smith](https://twitter.com/search?f=users&q=joe%20smith)
?

What other "social media" data can you provide? Facebook? (it's mostly private
and not available for low-grade stalking). Tinder?

What is your addressable market? How many jury selections there are in US
where "millions are on the line"? And if there really are "millions on the
line", can't they afford $250/hr jury consultant?

How did you validate your idea? How many attorneys at small companies did you
talk to? What is the "incredible value" of attorney knowing twitter posts of a
potential juror?

~~~
ratliffchrisb
They actually get a decent amount of information, the shortest time frame
would be a few days, usually a week or more.

A sample of information, just what I remember, I'm not looking at the list.

Name

age

education

limited previous legal experiences

Address

Employer and length of time with employer

members of household with relation and age

Criminal history, down to parking records, doesn't come with the juror info
sheet, but is usually easily accessible by attorneys.

Even simple things that can be grabbed from facebook/twitter/anything would be
useful. Often the halo effect or a person trying to get out of jury duty cause
some degree of deception. Anything that can verify what they said in court is
valuable. A jury could consist of as few as 6 people, finding that one of them
is biased against you and you can strike them is great. The smallest thing can
mean a great deal. Say under their favorite books they list civil
disobedience, you could easily strike them from a case where one side may be
some sort of conscientious objector.

True, if there are millions on the line the attorney would probably hire a
consultant, but in that case I think a consultants job would still be easier
with my tool than without it and should result in a sale for me, just from the
consultant instead of the attorney.

As far as market, not much like this exists, but it is being asked for. There
are roughly 80,000 trials per year in the US, a prosecution and defense for
each, so 160,000 opportunities. This also makes it such that there are 800,000
potential jurors per year. Some pricing structures I think are reasonable
could result in a revenue of under one billion per year.

I'll be honest I've not talked with many people, > 10, but the reactions I
received from those I've talked to has convinced me. I've talked to a few
civil and criminal lawyers, both public servants and private firms and the
feedback is usually ecstatic. "incredible value" might be my words, but
"invaluable" was what one lawyer kept saying. Further validation comes from a
rudimentary and necessary building block of this, note taking electronically
during jury selection, is immature to the point it almost doesn't exist was
something I was approached by attorneys to create. The data mining and giving
suggestions just seemed like a natural evolution, which so far has been
received well.

I know I won't be able to provide everything on every potential juror, but if
I'm consistently striking one I'm showing value. And with a pool of > 200
people I'm sure there's someone that I can dig up dirt on.

~~~
CyberFonic
The numbers you present do not make sense. 80,000 trials would mean 960,000
jurors selected, which would suggest at least 2M potential jurors. So how how
does that mean $1B? In the early days, you would be lucky to get 1%-2% of the
trials.

Realistically, you might need to create a MVP with lots of manual processing
to test the market. Or, find a VC who will believe your projections.

~~~
ratliffchrisb
You're right, I left off a zero, 8 million people report for jury duty a year.
Each potential juror is often researched by more than 4 attorneys. At $25 per
juror researched you end up around a billion dollars. $25 per juror is what
many attorneys pay for a criminal record check already, so this is a pricing
model they are familiar with and I think if the product provides as much
information as I believe it can the value could meet or exceed the value of a
criminal check. A criminal record might be more indicative of a bad juror, but
so few people have them compared to the number of people with other data
sources I think the expected value of information evens out.

And this is just the States, there are other countries that use similar
systems for jury selection.

I agree I won't make that until there is a mature product, but the question
was addressable market, not expected year 1 revenue.

The mvp I'm working on now allows the sharing of information about jurors.
This should allow me to gather data on how jurors vote tat can be marketed
while still making profit off the sharing app alone.

~~~
CyberFonic
Your answers to this and other comments are very good. You give the impression
that you have done a lot of research already. If you haven't already come
across Steve Blank's work take a look at "The Four Steps to the Epiphany".

Since it is such a huge potential market, it might be a good idea to work on
getting VC funding. The only caveat being, avoid "free" anything. Very hard to
convert to paying down the track. You could give early users the option of
investing and getting a chunk of discounted juror research for their money as
well as equity. Since you are already in contact with lawyers you should be
able to find some professional advice, etc.

~~~
ratliffchrisb
I would really like to talk to some VC's, unfortunately I'm based in the
Midwest, it might as well be the majove as far as funding goes or so I
understand. So I'm trying to get a sizable MVP and traction before spending
time talking to people. No one will talk to you unless you already have the
product launched with users here. Where I'm at the Ben and Jerry's model
almost makes more sense because by the time you can get funding you almost
don't need it anymore.

On the flip side, where I'm located the 120k from yc seed money would be a
year's runway for me and a cofounder or two. That and there is more talent
here than people think, or at least more good devs looking for work than
hiring.

If anyone has some contacts or VCs want to get in contact with me take my
username at Gmail to talk.

~~~
GaryLivingston
Hmm. Get some insight about the cities around you...

Request the Startup Ecosystem Report from here:

[http://startup-ecosystem.compass.co/ser2015/](http://startup-
ecosystem.compass.co/ser2015/)

Great research. Interesting notes about Chicago in there.

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pjlegato
How will you generate confidence that your product actually works at the
beginning, when you have no track record?

Why should a lawyer trust the outcome of an important case with "millions on
the line" to an unknown startup rather than do what they do now to select
juries (go with their gut, whatever)?

~~~
ratliffchrisb
I replied to PJ via email earlier because I was timed out on responses, but
for anyone wondering about this:

My MVP and what would likely become a free version is an app that allows for
the sharing of information about jurors and taking notes about jurors during
selection. The level of trust required for this is low, just don't delete
their info and your good. But while using the free version I imagine that if
you had a juror the attorney rated favorably and you had evidence they were an
undeniable liability and you showed this to the attorney it would prove the
paid tools worth and hopefully encourage them to pay to research the other
potential jurors after seeing my tool prevent such a blunder.

Even if it had a low conversion rate the free version still makes sense, more
users means more data to draw conclusions to give to those that are paying.

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CyberFonic
Have you researched different jurisdictions? I am dismayed that the lawyers
would be given so much information about potential jurors a week in advance.
Seems to run counter to the idea that jurors are selected from "peers".

Technically, you would be doing a lot of site scraping and that would take a
sizeable investment in development. Of course, assuming that you don't first
need to enter the details from hardcopy. Even if you get the information in
electronic form, it will probably be different for different courts, states,
etc.

~~~
ratliffchrisb
Yes and they vary drastically. Federal courts use the same jury pool for two
years, while a local court could be as little as two weeks.

Attorneys/secretaries/paralegals already do this by hand. More than scraping
I'm hoping to do something useful with what they already scrape manually. By
giving them a platform that make it easy to share their notes and info about
jurors I should be able to start using this information.

------
gpsgay
Very cool idea. How hard would it be to process the data in a meaningful way?
Are you familiar with the psychology behind it? Is it "standarized" somewhere
or rules of thumb that most people agree on with jury selection?

~~~
ratliffchrisb
I don't think it would be too difficult. Any question asked or note taken can
be analyzed. From whose perspective? Attorneys views on selection is simple;
"if they aren't favorable to me get the juror out". They really don't care how
or why. It is illegal to select based on race and gender, but it doesn't stop
them. (Check recent supreme Court case and batson laws) anything other than
that is fair game. Seeming to emotional or smart or attentive or inattentive
or rigid or conservative or liberal or religious can get you struck. A lot of
it is based off feeling and simple logic.

"I have a complex case, I need smart jurors" or "my case is based off
emotions, not facts, so I need emotional jurors" are common thoughts. Because
of this any insight into the potential juror is useful.

There is a great deal of rules of thumb. Strategies passed from attorney to
attorney, but little verified knowledge. That is what I'm hoping I can
provide.

~~~
CyberFonic
Didn't Dr Phil consult on the big court case against Oprah?

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seanreddy
I like this idea. A friend of my co-founder created something similar, albeit
with key differences, for politics (AppleCart). They are seeing some great
success so far, you may want to reach out to them.

------
d--b
Definitely a lot of potential here. Is the jury info public at all? Or is it
limited to attorneys? ie. Once an attorney sends you info about a particular
jury, can you reuse that information for something else?

~~~
ratliffchrisb
It becomes public record and is free for use. The attorneys I've been working
with locally have been able to hand me juror sheets. It's honestly kind of
scary that I can be handed that much personal info on someone and their
criminal record.

There are sites you can download this information from now. It is freely
available, but not freely distributed by the government. Somehow a file server
costs ten cents a page served, but you can access it all.

------
minimaxir
> _aggregate it to a probability of how that juror is likely to vote._

This would require knowledge of the case and case law. Which would then
require a full AI.

~~~
ratliffchrisb
No, nothing near it. There are tons of small details about jury selection that
is common knowledge to attorneys that are based off very general, singular,
facts. For example, a prosecutor will almost always strike a social worker if
they get the chance because they are supposedly always driven by mitigating
circumstances that make them highly unlikely to convict. Backing up, or
refuting, things like this and finding more of them once you have actual data
is child's play.

A probability based off a set of given facts and not every fact is still
useful and doesn't require AI.

To fully replace a jury consultant, yes that would require AI, but at their
going rate of >$250/hr I think an app could find a price point reflecting the
diminished result that is still very attractive in comparison.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I see three qualms, one "my reckons", one empirical, one moral.

1\. If you're already going to trial, especially with "millions on the line",
paying out a few thousand / tens of thousands to a consultant doesn't
necessarily seem to bad.

2\. Given how much jury tuning is going on right now, I would have worries
about the quality of the "actual data" and how much insight you could get from
such a contaminated corpus.

3\. Prosecutors already have an incredible amount of power in jury selection,
why do they need more?

~~~
ratliffchrisb
1\. I agree. I think this app could be useful to the consultants too by making
their jobs easier. I think I would still see a sale, just from a consultant
not the attorney. I think two separate markets would be those who can't afford
or it doesnt make sense to hire consultants and the consultants themselves.

2\. The biogdaphic/demographic data is all from forms and attorneys would have
no reason to lie to their own device they are using to reference juror
information from. I think most of the information would be reliable.

3\. The defense cab use it too ;). But seriously, the juror selection process
is designed for each attorney to be able to get rid of anyone they think is
biased against then with the hope that by both attorneys doing this those left
create a fair hury. Is this optimal? No. Would my tool make a suboptimal
solution better? Yes I believe it will.

I think it is the programmer optimization drive in us that makes this seem
crappy that it isn't being completely overhauled since it isn't optimal, but
my solution does help.

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angersock
Why would you ever seek to further rig the justice system in such a fashion?

~~~
hotpockets
It sounds like it levels the playing field, doesn't it?

~~~
angersock
It gives an advantage to attorneys that can afford it. The vast majority of
cases that see trial probably don't have a lot of money for the defense to
spend on such things, while the prosecution has access to the DA's site
license or whatever.

It's hard to believe this wouldn't end up mostly used by prosecutors.

~~~
ratliffchrisb
That is a possible outcome.

Like I said though, with courtrooms being adversarial one side is incentivized
to use any useful tool against the other. If the defense can't afford it and
therefore doesn't use it, it becomes less likely the prosecution will use it
then too. Maybe to counteract this I have to subsidize the cost of those using
it for defense.

It is far to early to say for certain, but in order to generate better juror
recommendations data is needed, I want as many people using it as possible to
get data.

~~~
angersock
_If the defense can 't afford it and therefore doesn't use it, it becomes less
likely the prosecution will use it then too._

That's exceptionally unlikely, I think. The prosecution's job is to win,
whatever the cost--that appears to be the current mode of operation in the US,
anyways.

~~~
ratliffchrisb
Even so, I do have some benefit to having defense attorneys use it. I'll get
more data on jurors.

Having people pay what they will or can isn't a new idea. If the defense can't
pay an individual license may be cheap, while an office license could be
exorbitant if the DA will pay through the nose.

The main point of the last post is that I gain nothing if they don't use it,
but if anyone is paying for it I still gain from other free users.

As I mentioned the I think system is suboptimal, I think this can improve it
though. I'm not a jerk who would screw the Justice system for a buck, I really
do think this can improve things. I don't think the possibility that it might
hurt is reason enough not to try.

~~~
angersock
Maybe make it free for public defenders. Lord knows they could use the help.

