When Nick Schweitzer counted the sessions at a major psychology and law conference a couple of years ago, less than 1% involved civil litigation. As co-founder and COO of Focus with Fred, he’s out to change that. Usually behind the mic as co-host, Nick takes the guest seat as trial scientist Alicia Campbell turns the spotlight on his Science of Juries and Litigation Project at Cornell, which studies how civil jurors decide liability and damages. Nick shares the questions plaintiffs' lawyers are bringing to his team, like when to make your damages ask. He also explains why, with a key National Science Foundation program going away, the project now depends on the community it serves.

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☑️ Alicia Campbell

☑️ Nick Schweitzer

☑️ Focus with Fred

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Voice Over (00:03):

Every trial lawyer knows that moment when you've built what feels like an airtight case, but you're still lying awake wondering what will the jury actually think? Jury research was once a luxury reserved for cases that could support a big data study bill. Not anymore. Join trial lawyer and trial scientist Alicia Campbell and empirical legal scholar, Nick Schweitzer, as they break down the barriers between you and the minds of your jury. This is the Fred Files, produced and powered by LawPods.

Alicia Campbell (00:36):

Hello and welcome to the Fred Files. I have to say we've been on a little bit of a hiatus. We haven't recorded any in a bit. That's really my fault. I had some knee work done over the summer and have been laid up a little bit, and so we just haven't put together any podcasts really because of me. But we are back at it. We have a whole string of podcasts lined up that we're going to be recording over the next couple months. So stay tuned for good information from the Fred Files. And today I'm very excited because I am solo hosting today. And the reason is because we're going to talk to Nick Schweitzer, the man that I would let run any of my businesses, the dude I trust so much with decisions and thoughts. And he's a thoughtful guy. He's a smart guy, a wonderful person, warm, caring, and kind.

(01:24):

So I'm so excited I get to interview him today because he's got even more going on besides running Trial By Data, besides doing Fred and all the things he does with Fred. And he works at Cornell and has an array of things that he does at Cornell. So I wanted to get the scoop from Nick because you guys have been there how long now? How long have you and Jess been at Cornell?

Nick Schweitzer (01:47):

This is month 15-ish, I think. So yeah, last summer, summer 25, we moved out here.

Alicia Campbell (01:54):

And he's got all kinds of things going on at Cornell. So I was like, dude, we have to talk about all the wonderful things you're doing because he was a very, very successful professor when he was at ASU. And when he and Jess made this transition, she was going to be teaching a little bit more, tell me if I'm wrong, but then go ahead and cultivating this law and human behavior culture at Cornell. And you're the guy that's going to be running... You tell me, what is it going to be? Is it a center? Is it an institute? What are you putting together, Nick?

Nick Schweitzer (02:26):

That's a good question. So just as a bit of background, not to bore anyone out there, but —

Alicia Campbell (02:32):

No one will be bored.

Nick Schweitzer (02:33):

Okay.

Alicia Campbell (02:34):

No.

Nick Schweitzer (02:35):

So a couple years ago when Jess Salerno and I were at Arizona State, we had already been working with Alicia and John a little bit on things and we realized there needed to be more stuff around juries and not just juries, but just the broader litigation kind of space. And we wanted to start something. We wanted to start a research center and we actually got to the point of getting that together at Arizona State and that would've involved a bunch of folks there. There's a big law and psychology kind of group there along with Laura Smalarz who works with us with Trial by Data and helps analyze a lot of the big data studies that come through. We were going to put something together there. And then of course an opportunity came along to move over here to Cornell and we did something a little different.

(03:23):

So at ASU, both Jessica and I were just kind of, I don't want to call them regular professors in psychology and law, taught, we mentored students, did research, all that sort of stuff. Moving to Cornell, Jess continues to do that and has a very large... I mean, those of you who are listening are hopefully at least a little interested in the law, but a lot of people are and a lot of psychology students are actually interested in the law. And so when you start a research lab focused on psychology and law, a lot of people come to it. So she has, I don't know how many students, dozens and dozens of students working in her lab on various projects, ton of research and then teaches a seminar on psychology and law and some other more specialized things. And then I have been given the task of taking this kind of research center idea that we had at ASU and making that happen here at Cornell.

(04:18):

And so for me, I'm doing now, I've kind of stepped away from the teaching sort of aspect of this and done a little bit more of the, I guess, administration program building, infrastructure building kind of stuff now. So that's kind of my focus here at Cornell. And so it's a little bit daunting. It's a new place. You don't know how anything works when you get there. So we've been trying to figure that out and trying to get this going and we've made some pretty good progress so far actually.

Alicia Campbell (04:51):

Yeah. So are you thinking it's a center? Is it an institute? What are you thinking?

Nick Schweitzer (04:55):

Yeah, so at ASU is going to be a center. And again, to reiterate, I don't want to bore anyone, so I'm going to be very broad in how I'm talking about this because the politics and intricacies of a huge university bureaucracy are probably not good podcast material. But a research center, when you hear about it, some university has a center on this or a center on that, that can mean any number of things. And as it turns out within universities, different colleges in different areas have different kind of thoughts on what that should entail. Law schools have a lot of centers throughout the country. You've probably all, wherever any of you went, I'm sure there were centers on this, centers on that. There was a time when they were handed out like candy, just like anyone who wanted a center gets a center. In arts and science colleges like where psychology is and the College of Human Ecology here at Cornell, which is where Jessica and I are primary kind of home is, their research centers are a lot more focused on sustainable funding models and having groups of people together who can kind of work on common problems and things like that.

(06:01):

And so the kind of hurdle is a lot higher and the bar is a lot higher to get to a center. So what we've been trying to do is we of course want to involve both psychology and we want to involve the law school. Of course, those of you who've been to JuryBall have seen or heard from Valerie Hans. Valerie is a law professor. Cornell yet is a social psychologist like Jessica and I. And so we want to make sure that this is something that uses and draws expertise from not just our side of psychology, but also the law school. And so the trick has been negotiating then between multiple colleges, multiple deans, multiple parties, and how can we kind of create this sort of thing? So that's all a roundabout way of saying we think it'll eventually turn into a center, but what I think, especially for the audience here, I think probably the form it's going to take is we're going to have a formal university center that focuses on juries and trials and things like that.

(06:58):

And it'll be kind of broader in the broad sense. It might not just be civil, it might be criminal, it might be all sorts of different, might involve plea bargaining, might involve judicial decision making, things like that. But the key thing that we're doing is we're creating within it some various projects or initiatives or things like that that will kind of be their own little mini center. And the thing that I'm personally most excited about is to take what we had wanted to do at ASU, which is I think really of most interest to the folks here, and really create something that focuses on understanding civil juror decision making, particularly in how people determine liability, how people determine damages and the processes that go into that. And that has come out of a lot of our experience working with big data studies and kind of seeing the trials that come through and seeing how they play out and seeing them studied again and again and again and what changes.

(07:52):

And you can see all that sort of stuff. And from the other direction, we have all this kind of knowledge from psychology and theories we want to test and things like that. And doing it in this kind of civil realm is a particularly interesting, at least to me, way to go about doing it.

Alicia Campbell (08:07):

So the idea is it would operate as like a little center, but it's going to be dealing with all the things that we do with big data.

Nick Schweitzer (08:14):

Yeah.

Alicia Campbell (08:14):

Okay.

Nick Schweitzer (08:15):

Yes. The name that this project, and probably if you're at JuryBall this fall, this is September, there'll be a JuryBall this fall in Las Vegas. There'll be a JuryBall in the spring in Madrid. You'll probably hear us talking about the Science of Juries and Litigation Project, and that will be this kind of tailor-made kind of little mini center that we're going to dedicate to exactly this sort of stuff. And it was really important to kind of focus on the decision-making process, not just of juries, but along the way, attorneys, how are you deciding what to ask for? How are you deciding what evidence to present? How are you deciding whether to settle or not and what pulls the trigger for you? And so we also, I make a point to say this whenever I talk. So psychology and law, there's a lot of people who study this.

(09:04):

There's a lot of papers out there on juries and there's a lot of work out there on trials. A couple years ago at the kind of big professional conference for us, which is the American Psychology-Law Society, I picked the program and I went through and I counted how many things — whether they were presentation or a panel, a symposium, a poster, whatever — how many things had to do with civil litigation? And of the entire three-day long, many simultaneous sessions going on morning till night, hundreds of things, less than 1% of anything at that conference had anything to do. And I was being very generous in what I included in that list, too. So civil litigation is not something that's getting a lot of attention from the field. And so it was really important to Jess and I, especially working with the folks that we do, that we make civil juries, civil litigation kind of a key area of focus for this project that we're doing.

Alicia Campbell (09:58):

Yeah,

(09:59):

I imagine most of it's criminal.

Nick Schweitzer (10:01):

Oh, everybody loves the criminal this and that. And it's interesting and it's important and it's an interesting psychological situation because you need unanimity, you always have 12 people for the most part. And then the consequences can be a lot more kind of serious or at least more tangible to people and the crimes themselves are sometimes of interest too. So a lot of people, by default, people are really interested in criminal stuff. And I quickly became kind of bored with it, but I think that's the reason why we see so little civil is just because of this draw to criminal and crime stuff.

Alicia Campbell (10:34):

Interesting. So it's the Center for Science of Juries and Litigation, is that what it's called?

Nick Schweitzer (10:40):

So the little mini thing will be the Science of Juries and Litigation Project. The overall center, we are not to dip back into the bureaucracy, but everyone has an idea of what the name should be, what's too broad, what's too narrow, what looks good for the university, what looks good for the colleges, all that sort of stuff. So the specific center name is being finalized now, but we hope to have that kind of figured out in the next couple weeks here. But there is the kind of Science of Juries and Litigation Project, which is I think the key thing that we'll be talking a lot about. That we've gotten a lot further on and that's basically ready. We're going to be launching that essentially immediately.

Alicia Campbell (11:24):

And so it's going to be the civil litigation side. Are there other things that could be in the center or are you going to be in charge of the center?

Nick Schweitzer (11:31):

Yeah, so basically the way it's going to work is me and Valerie Hans will be co-directing the center, one from the psychology side, one from the law school side. That's kind of how we decided it's best to arrange that so there'll be co-directors. And the center itself, there's a lot of people with a lot of interest in a lot of things. Valerie has done a lot of work. She's done a lot of scientific work on juries, but also is very interested in how do jury systems operate? What's the best way to set them up? How do other countries create them? How do those operate? And so that's an element of studying juries. It's not necessarily jury decision making, but that can be another separate kind of one of those clusters or initiatives or projects within there. Jessica has been very interested in kind of making sure, thinking a lot about seating fair and representative juries.

(12:20):

And there's a lot that actually goes into that and both in the criminal and the civil side, just making sure that process from calling, summoning all the way through seating, how do you make sure that that's fair? How do you make sure you end up with a good unbiased jury? And so that's I think another kind of cluster or project that we'll probably end up with. So these different things are going to be kind of all under the center umbrella. The Science of Juries and Litigation Project, that'll be... So while I'm co-directing the entire center, I'm also then solo directing that specific project on the science of juries and litigation.

Alicia Campbell (12:57):

And so the science for juries and litigation project, what do you see it doing? What's going to be its primary function or what's the plan for

Nick Schweitzer (13:05):

It? What's the plan? So what's been interesting having gone now to a bunch of JuryBalls and having done a lot of studies is basically every couple cases that come through that we see and every couple people we talk to, somebody says something and we're like, "Oh, that's a good idea." Or a question is asked and we're like, "That's a great question." So we go write it down and we start amassing a huge list of things that are just all very interesting questions, all of them motivated by pretty much plaintiffs' attorneys who we've interacted with in these different ways. And we want a way to start making our way through that list. And it takes time and it takes people to be able to do some of this. And so the plan is we've started already, we don't need to wait for this to launch to get the research going.

(13:57):

So Jessica in particular, I think has a session at the fall, this upcoming JuryBall this fall. She's going to be talking about some new research that we've been starting and it came right out of, I think, one of the last JuryBalls. People said, when should you make your ask for damages? Should you bring it up in voir dire? Should you do it in opening? Should you just do it in closing? What happens? And so that's an interesting question. There's a lot of obviously practical implications for that. And on our end, because we're psychologists, we're also interested in the why. Why does it matter, if it does matter? And so we have some preliminary data on that and we're hoping to get a second round of data funded through JEDI that Jess will be talking about at JuryBall. We have all different kinds of, I mean, we have basically these bulletin boards full of research ideas and the idea is to get the people together to start working through them.

(14:48):

And we talk, one of the things that we do, for those of you who will be at JuryBall and hear this before then, come find us and talk to us and tell us what are the things that you kind of wish you knew or that you thought might be interesting to know on a broad level. It's a little harder to do, well, I have a case that has this little specific thing in it, but when there are things that tend to come up case after case after case and you wonder what's the best way to do this, there's often kind of interesting ways of figuring out the answer to that. And so come talk to us and see A, if we know something that's already exists that can speak to it, but also maybe that's something that can be added to our list of projects moving forward.

Alicia Campbell (15:27):

So this is going to be something like what you guys did with the voir dire paper that we use so much now.

Nick Schweitzer (15:32):

Yes.

Alicia Campbell (15:33):

Where it's going to be empirical, peer reviewed literature that's written up that then lawyers can use to inform judges, to inform the other side, to have some actual data points about, "Hey, Your Honor, actually it's better for me to be able to say the numbers in voir dire and to keep me from that, we're making a decision that is detrimental to me. It's not something that is easy as like, well, we don't feel like carrying it in voir dire. So if that's how the results test out, it'd be something that people can use in that way.

Nick Schweitzer (16:03):

Exactly. And I think another kind of priority, particularly for this Science of Juries and Litigation Project is the key word in there is science. There are people who study juries. There's people all over the country who think about juries, who write about juries. There's a lot of people who do scientific research in the context of a jury, but it's not really about... The jury is just kind of the mechanism. They might be interested in a particular eyewitness evidence and they're just using a jury's decision as a way to figure out what evidence or what eyewitness techniques are more believable or not, something like that. Thinking about just the general process of studying how a jury comes to a decision — there's not as many people, in fact very few, doing that in a scientific sort of way. Doing it in a scientific way is important to us.

(16:51):

And so that has two consequences. One, those of you who have read or attempted to read a scientific journal article know that they can be kind of dense. There are norms for what we have to say, how we say it. They're not really written for general audiences. They're written for other psychologists, other scientists. So what we want to make sure we do is in parallel with all of these kind of projects we're doing, for every kind of paper we put out or even parts of papers or parts of projects, when we have an interesting thing that we think is of use to the broader community, we're going to have a white paper series and that'll be published online and we basically write up in a very accessible way what we've done, what we've found, what the implications are. And those white papers are often good to get things rolling in terms of whether it's policy decisions or even just kind of knowing how things work. And you know,

(17:46):

we had a podcast earlier in this sequence about Kansas and tort reform and you know, a potential, should you allow the potential to take away the ability of counsel on either side to give a specific damage guidance amount. And you know, the question was, well, what happens? And so we were able to actually very quickly respond to that. We got a white paper out right away, actually a couple white papers out right away, and that ended up helping quite a bit and that got beaten back at least for that legislative session as a result. And so we want to make sure that those are out there because it's hard to take just the dense articles and get them in the hands of whether it's attorneys who want to use the information or lawmakers or whoever, judges, and have it be something that they can actually look at and be like, "Okay, now I know what to do with this information because it's been made kind of clear."

(18:37):

But then of course, ultimately we are also making sure that our results do go out into scientific journals. They're peer reviewed. If you remember, well, those of you who took evidence post Daubert, whenever that was, '90s, peer review is a key kind of element of making sure that scientific evidence is admissible. And so really in the scientific world, that's because really we want our findings to be peer reviewed and published somewhere for them to really count, I guess.

Alicia Campbell (19:05):

Yeah. Oh, that's exciting. So with all this being said, then I suppose what's happening is Cornell is funding all the research, or let me guess, there are grants available to fund this research anymore?

Nick Schweitzer (19:19):

No. So the National Institute of Justice has occasionally funded some research on jury related stuff. So both Jessica and I have had grants from NIJ to do jury research. We've done big in-person mock jury deliberation studies. It was a huge pain in the ass. It's not something that I recommend to people unless you're really interested in many years of hassle. But apart from them, the National Science Foundation, to their credit, for a very long time had a program called Law and Social Science, and eventually they renamed it to Law and Science. And it was a special grant program. It was a standing program every single, twice a year, every year, you could submit a grant application for projects that were related to law, relevant to the law, had implications for the law, and involved some sort of scientific method, whether it was psychologists, there are sociologists, those of you who know anything about law and society, that's a big field, and there's people who are political science or whatever that think about the law, write about the law.

(20:24):

A lot of law professors go do some of that work as well. We also had grants for that kind of work because you're going to run these studies, you need mock jurors really, and you have to pay mock jurors, especially if you want to get good representative samples. Sometimes you need to pay people to do things. We try to use, because we have students, we're able to have armies of undergraduate students who are in our research labs do some of this work, and that's for credit because they're getting experience and we're kind of mentoring them through the process. But for the most part, a lot of it is just like anything else, you need people, you need power, so that means you need money to do things. So the NSF was a big source of that. And then as of last year, the NSF was gutted and it's not just like budgets were cut.

(21:15):

The decision was made that the entire SES, Social and Economic Sciences division would go away. And that included a lot of things that included political science. And if you know the politics of this, there's a lot of criticism about like, oh, NSF is funding anti-American DEI, whatever. And a lot of the targets were in the sociology and political science programs, NSF. The Law and Science one is part of that one as well. So it's in that same division. So essentially that entire program is now going away. And so there is no mechanism really moving forward to get funding to do this kind of work. And especially to be honest, I don't think there's an anti-civil bias in that work, but when people talk about, when people are pitching to the NSF like, "Oh, this work is important because criminal this and death penalty that, and people will be locked away and wrongful incarceration" — all that sort of stuff — that just gets more attention and it gets more kind of effort than anything else.

(22:20):

So it was hard to get civil stuff funded to begin with. Now it's basically impossible.

Alicia Campbell (22:25):

What is the mechanism then for the project to be able to do research? What is it that we need to do, Nick? What's the call to action?

Nick Schweitzer (22:33):

Well, okay. So this is not intended to be a half-hour long advertisement for our center, but what we've been incredibly lucky so far is the kindness of, in particular, John and Alicia Campbell. But we also have contributions from many others in kind of the JuryBall family, let's say, that have gone in a couple different ways. What we've done so far is there is a new organization called JEDI, and JEDI Justice Through Empirical Data Initiative until there's a cease and desist from George Lucas, and then it'll be called something else, but is a nonprofit and it really is focused on funding this kind of work. And there's been contributions through it. Some funding from JuryBall itself has gone into it, and it has allowed us to do some of this work. So this thing that you're going to hear about, this timing study, some of the work we had done on the ability, what happens when you take away the ability to ask for damages, a number of work on voir dire and length of voir dire study, how long do you need?

(23:39):

You getting extended voir dire time. All of that sort of stuff has been funded through that sort of mechanism. And that has been helpful, but what's happening is we're doing this on a piecemeal basis. Oh, here's this project, here's this project. We're able to cover little bits of things. And the thing is, what we really want to be able to do is we want to be able to grow this into something that can sustainably year over year do this kind of work, make our way through all of these sorts of projects, respond when there are, whether it's legislative initiatives or whatever pops up that people are like, oh, we need a scientific voice on this topic. And we want to be that first stop for where people go when it's something jury related and there needs to be some like, well, what does the science have to say about this?

(24:27):

And in order to do that, we need kind of sustainable, shouldn't surprise anyone to quote both deans, you need sustainable funding model. So what that means is, just to give credit, so the Cornell College of Human Ecology, our dean, Rachel Dunifon, she provided essentially a seed funding, a startup sort of thing. And so gave us some time, a little bit of money to get going and said, all right, get some of this rolling, get yourself situated, get this developed, and then start showing that you can kind of sustain it. And so realistically, the answer is going to have to be, and there is no real way around this, that we're going to have to ask the community of people who are most impacted by our work if they're willing to help support it, whether it's in a small way, in a larger way, one time thing, an ongoing thing in terms of year over year or endowed thing.

(25:24):

Once you get into this sort of realm, there's a million different ways you can do this, but that is the way that, unfortunately, the only way this kind of stuff will get done.

Alicia Campbell (25:33):

Yeah, especially with the lack of funding. I mean, I don't think people... Well, I think some people have a sense that the gutting of funding for research was painful. I mean, there's literally no money, and there's lots of things that we need to test and research. So it really is kind of up to all of us who are in this space to contribute so that something like this can thrive because you're right, we have lists and lists and lists of things that we need to test that could really make the civil litigation side just generally stronger, which I mean, as anybody who's talked to me very long knows, now that we've been doing this for so long, John and I have been studying juries for 11 years and we're over 2,000 cases. Even in the space of online studies, jurors work to do such a good job.

(26:20):

They work hard to get it right and they're careful and they care about it. And frankly, most of them enjoy the process anyway, which we know to be true when they have jury duty, right? It makes them feel better about the process. And it's a process that we have to together make sure that we're doing the right things. There's no need now to make decisions or evidentiary rulings or rulings about voir dire or set in stone the way voir dire is being done or set in stone the way that an attorney can present their case. There's no reason to do it without data. And so now what we have to do is just get you the funding so we can have the data that tells us, yeah, when should I be talking about money? Is there a point in time where I should be doing it?

(27:01):

And if a court's not allowing me to, are they actually hurting my case? Because what we should be striving for is the most fair and impartial system we can get. So yeah, I'm going to pitch you endlessly, Nick Schweitzer, because yes, I think anybody listening should write me an email and say, how do I give to Nick's project because I want to contribute and I get that there's nowhere else this money's going to come from than all of us who live in this world every day and we see all of its challenges. And what we all know is that the challenges are being addressed willy-nilly by whoever has an idea about something. And I think there's just a better way of doing it. We just have to make sure that you're able to get all that together. I mean, I can't imagine how many people, Nick, you would need to actually hire to study all of the things that need to be studied, but I have no doubt if anyone can do it, it's you.

(27:54):

That's the thing is I have absolute trust and belief in you to do this so well. So I want to make sure everybody listening today inundate my inbox with emails and say, Alicia, all I want to do today is give to the project because it's that important. And you know what? You're right, it is. It's that important that we sure up this part of our political system because it is the one that's untouchable. It is the ruling from the class of people who are dealing with things on the ground because it's from the neighborhood. It's all the people of the community speaking out and saying what they think should be without any money and interest. Well, I mean, we're up against moneyed interests and what that requires is money to make sure that we can say, Hey, no, we should not be passing this tort reform law.

(28:41):

It is absolutely an injustice to all the members of the community and they get a say. So we need to shore up that say. It's all I think about every day because it is really the best way to do things on earth, I think. It really is. I don't know what you want to put up, Nick, but I'm so thrilled for you. I think this is amazing. I'm really excited about it. So people, call to action. We need to support Nick.

Nick Schweitzer (29:06):

It's the center, the project, the research and all that.

Alicia Campbell (29:11):

Yes, you're right. I'm not trying to... The center is very important, but this little silo, this specific silo, I think is going to be the most important part to the people listening to the Fred Files, right?

Nick Schweitzer (29:20):

Yeah, it'll be, and I think some of the other ones certainly will as well. We are specifically kind of strategically having individual ways, like funding in the individual silo, as you said. So the Science of Juries and Litigation Project is a specific thing that can be supported, and that's the stuff we've been talking about here.

Alicia Campbell (29:38):

Yeah, because I think that might be a little different than people who are worried maybe that the money would... Not that you don't want to know how jury systems can be implemented in other countries, but that's very fascinating, but it's not really what we're trying to do here. So you've created and carved this out just for us so people have peace of mind and they know exactly where their dollars are going.

Nick Schweitzer (29:57):

That's exactly. I mean, the last thing anyone wants to do is I'm very cognizant and I don't like spending other people's money. I tend to drag my feet and only when it's really necessary do I do things. Some of the startup money that I was even given, I've barely spent any of it so far just because I'm like, oh, I don't want to do it until there's something really worth it. So I mean, we're going to be good stewards of this sort of money and using it very wisely, very strategically. And if people are interested, I mean, I will say just more broadly, there's people out there who are interested in criminal matters or just broader jury things. I mean, you could support the entire center too if you want, if you're interested in that sort of thing. So I don't want to necessarily turn off that idea if you're like, no, I just like juries in general.

(30:42):

It all kind of supports everything, but the specific thing that we'll I think probably talk about a JuryBall, and I think we'll have some links and some other things that will go out and that will be kind of specific to this juries and litigation project.

Alicia Campbell (30:55):

Juries and litigation project. I like it. Yeah, because you're going to sub in for JEDI this year at JuryBall in Las Vegas because normally part of JuryBall for Madrid and Las Vegas is Justice Watch is what Sean's put together with Nick Rowley. We're asking for donations there and we're usually asking for donations for JEDI because that's what John and I have put together to try to help fund this type of research. And so we're taking JEDI out. Not that you can't contribute to JEDI, you definitely can, but we do want to put Nick front and center because he's critical to our work. We'd like to see him be successful with this center. And so we want to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to hear about it and to contribute because it matters. And so yeah, you'll hear more about this at JuryBall.

(31:38):

We'll send some blasts out about it as well, but any way that we can help support Nick and Jess for us is the thing to do because as long as they have the funds, they will crank out all the work that can just be helpful for us making sure that the process is fair and balanced and accessible for more and more people, frankly.

Nick Schweitzer (31:58):

Thank you for having me, Alicia.

Alicia Campbell (31:59):

Okay, well that's today. Of course, thanks for coming. Thanks for putting up with my questions, but I'm so thrilled to have you here. And anybody who has any questions, just let me know or do any contact. If you want to go to Campbell Law and just do the contact submission or Focus with Fred, any way that you can get in touch with us, please do. Call the office. I'll direct you to how you can give money so that we can start doing more and more of this research and do it consistently and so that we have, I mean, I'm sure Tom, who's on the podcast before the summer, he would tell you there was nothing better than being able to reach out and say, "Hey, I need a little help here in Kansas." And to have a team that was ready to go, but that all requires time and money.

(32:42):

So anything that you guys can do to help all you listeners, cool. Also come to JuryBall. JuryBall Vegas is November 1st. Starting, come play golf, come hang out. John and I will be there. Nick and Jess will be there. We have an array of speakers coming from mediators to people who've just had trial with Amazon. So come out and see us, hear about the different things that we're doing. We've got a workshop for anybody who's curious about big data and how to use it. We'll have a workshop towards the end of the conference so you can learn the ins and outs of how to get your presentations in such a way that you can get good data. And then of course we just love seeing everybody. And then at JuryBall Vegas, we'll release all the deets for JuryBall Madrid, which of course, how can you not put that on your calendar?

(33:27):

But in with all of this, be thinking, "Hey, I need to make sure that I'm giving to the Science of Juries and Litigation Project."

Nick Schweitzer (33:35):

All right.

Alicia Campbell (33:35):

Did I get that right?

Nick Schweitzer (33:36):

Yes, you did.

Alicia Campbell (33:37):

Lots of zeros. Lots of zeros on the chest.

Nick Schweitzer (33:40):

Sure. At the end, not the beginning.

Alicia Campbell (33:43):

Oh, I love it. Well, yeah, that takes care of today. We wanted to kind of make it short and punchy and get right to it. Call to action for all you plaintiff lawyers. Think about that the next time you settle your big case or you get a good verdict that this was possible because of empirical data, big data and the work that Jess and Nick do. So anything else? Any sign off that you want, Nick, or are we good to go?

Nick Schweitzer (34:05):

That's it. I think for now, we'll see you in our time just a few minutes, but it'll be a separate episode because we're going to record two in a row here.

Alicia Campbell (34:12):

Yeah, exactly. We're going to try to crank these out so everybody can get back to listening on their drives home or their free time. We love it. Thank you for listening to the Fred Files.

Nick Schweitzer (34:21):

We'll see you next time.

Alicia Campbell (34:22):

Have a wonderful day, everybody.

Voice Over (34:26):

Thank you for listening to the Fred Files. If you found value in today's discussion, please subscribe and share this episode with your colleagues. To explore how Fred can transform your case preparation, visit us at focuswithfred.com. Produced and Powered by LawPods.