PUBLISHED IN THE JURY EXPERT: IDENTIFYING GOOGLING JURORS

The Googling Juror is becoming increasingly important to identify. In the December 2015 issue of The Jury Expert, researchers Alexis Knutson of Tsongas Litigation Consulting with Edie Greene and Robert Durham of University of Colorado Colorado Springs published an article on the development of a new tool to identify juror internet use during trial. Researchers suspected that some jurors are more likely than others to break judicial instructions banning internet use during trial. To test this idea, they developed the Juror Internet Research Scale (JIRS) to distinguish between those who are more or less likely to follow the rules. This tool aims to assist trial consultants and attorneys in identifying those jurors in voir dire who are most likely to engage in internet research. Click here to access the full article, which includes the scale developed in this research.