Jury Strike is an extremely easy to use iPad application intended to help trial attorneys organize and access the responses of prospective jurors during the voir dire process. It is meant to be used for the part of the voir dire known as General Voir Dire, where attorneys ask general questions of the entire panel, without asking follow up questions. Jury Strike allows you to track juror responses so that you can effectively follow-up with individual jurors to discover juror bias.
How to use Jury Strike:
Tap “Start New Case.” You will be prompted to enter information about the case including the style and the court where the case is pending. You will also be able to set up how the jury venire looks by inputting how many prospective jurors are sitting in each row and if they are seated from left to right, or right to left. You can change this information at any time by clicking on “Set Up” which will take you back to this initial page.
By pressing "View Venire," you can make sure that Jury Strike has set up your venire correctly.
The next step is to input your voir dire questions. You can either do this by typing each question, or by cutting and pasting questions from another document (the easiest way to do this is by emailing yourself a list of questions). In addition, you can import specific questions used in a previous case without having to add them again. At the same time you enter the questions, Jury Strike allows you to enter any follow-up questions that you want to use with the individual jurors.
If you decide to delete a question or reorder the questions, just tap the edit button above the list of questions. Pressing the red button to the left of the question will let you delete that question. Pressing the three bars to the right of the question will allow you to move and drag the questions to reorder them. At any point, you can email a listing of your questions so that other members of your team can review them. You can do this by tapping the “My Questions” at the bottom of the page, choosing the case name, and then tapping the envelope icon in the upper right hand side of the box.
After your questions have been entered, it is time to start General Voir Dire. Tap “General VD” and you will be taken a page that has your questions listed on the left with your prospective jurors on the right. As you ask each question, tap it and then tap the number of each juror who answers the question affirmatively. You can also easily scroll through the questions if you want to skip a question(s) or ask them in a different order (or not ask a question at all). If you happen to make a mistake and touch the wrong juror number, just touch it again to clear the response. Of course, you won’t have your opposing counsel’s questions beforehand. So, Jury Strike gives you the option of adding questions on the fly by tapping the “Add Question” button on the bottom left-hand side.
After you are finished asking all of your general voir dire questions, tap “Individual VD” to be taken to the individual juror pages. The jurors with their names (if you have input them) and their numbers are listed on the left. By tapping the juror number, you will be able to immediately see what questions that particular juror answered “yes” to and whatever juror information you have inputted. The box that lists the “Follow Up Questions” is scrollable. You can also make notes about each juror (great for keeping record of responses to individual questions or for recording your impressions). There is also a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” feature that you can tap when you are questioning an individual so you can record your initial feeling about the juror one way or the other.
If you are able to get the juror names and information sheets before the trial begins, you can enter this information into the juror’s individual profile by tapping the “Juror Profiles” button. When you are in the “Juror Profiles” view, you can email a listing of the jurors, profile information and any questions that require follow-up to yourself or someone else on your team for printing or to be put in the file.
After you have asked all of your follow-up questions, it is time to strike your jury. Simply tap “Strike Jury” and you will be taken to the strike page. As you strike a juror, or as your opposing counsel strikes a juror, simply tap on the number. One tap for “P,” two taps for “D,” and three taps for any strikes for cause that occur prior to the parties using their preemptory strikes. If you tap a juror by mistake just tap four times and it will clear the “strike.”
Once all of the strikes have been exhausted, tap “Seat Jury” to see those jurors in the box. The graphic view of the “Final Jury” page will show you the selected jurors and also any alternates in a box. The list view will list each juror by name and number.
For each case, all of your information will be saved and archived so that you can access in the future.
