Apply HN: Jury Board – helping attorneys win cases through jury selection
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.
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.
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/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. 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 ? 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? 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. Some added notes. Attorneys already look up juror's facebooks/twitters/etc if they can. I would just be helping them use that data. I would try to automate as much as possible, but even if I can't there is still plenty of data to look at. Also, I've not really explored this avenue much, but any information brought up in this investigation or given to attorneys becomes a matter of public record. It seems like there would be a great deal you could do with that, but I'm not really into the personal data selling thing. 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. 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. 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. 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. Hmm. Get some insight about the cities around you... Request the Startup Ecosystem Report from here: http://startup-ecosystem.compass.co/ser2015/ Great research. Interesting notes about Chicago in there. 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)? 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. 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. 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. The "peers" part of "a jury of one's peers" is widely misunderstood. It is a remnant of the medieval legal distinction between nobles and commoners. It simply means that nobles can only be tried by a jury of other nobles, and commoners can only be tried by a jury of other commoners. 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? 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. Didn't Dr Phil consult on the big court case against Oprah? 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. 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? 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. > 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. 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. 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? 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. Why would you ever seek to further rig the justice system in such a fashion? It sounds like it levels the playing field, doesn't it? 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. 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. 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. 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. Maybe make it free for public defenders. Lord knows they could use the help. This. Kind of what I said in the main post. It seems crappy that you're giving someone an advantage, but it would be available to both sides. The justice system is structured this way because they believe attorneys will act in their self interest only and by letting them both do so it will be fair. I'm just allowing them both to have better tools while they do it.