As readers of this blog may know, we participated in a 5+ week all-Zoom trial in May and June of 2021, resulting in a significant verdict for our most deserving clients: a young boy and his two amazing parents. Following that trial, we had the good fortune to be able to pick the brain of one of the jurors in our trial, who also happened to be a trial lawyer himself. His perspective was valuable to us in many ways. So, what’s it like to be a juror in an all Zoom trial? Here are a few examples.

Jurors were viewing the trial through all different types of devices: although there were some rules on what devices could be used to view the trial, there was a lot of variation. This included watching on a laptop, or an iPad, or even an iPhone, as one juror did. Imagine watching a real trial on an iPhone screen. It made us realize how important it was to have good sound quality and volume, clear pictures, and big words (and just a few of them) on slides.

Jurors were watching the trial in all different environments: as this lawyer/juror explained, in a regular, in person trial, lawyers (along with the judge) can control much of the environment within which a trial is experienced. Not so in a virtual setting. Certainly, the jurors had directions from the judge to be in a place by themselves and without distractions, but other than going by the honor system, it was impossible to control what else the jurors saw and heard when they weren’t looking at and listening to the trial on their screens. The impression we got was that the jurors were by and large attentive and not distracted, but it does highlight the relative lack of control the lawyers – and the Court – have in this regard.

It’s hard to pay attention to a screen for so long: this is a point that I didn’t understand until our lawyer/juror explained it to us. It’s physically demanding on your eyes to be staring intently at a screen for hours on end, day after day.

It is becoming more and more apparent that, at a minimum, elements of all-Zoom trials are here to stay in some counties in Washington State. Because of this, it will be important to learn as much as we can about the experiences of jurors in this process so that we can tailor our approach to our presentations and be the best advocates for our clients as we can be.