By Dr. Ken Broda-Bahm:
As the world’s main social media companies are in a California courtroom for a bellwether trial to contest claims that they are facilitating online addictions, courtrooms themselves have flirted and tested online applications, but have thus far mostly resisted the full online embrace. Online engagement may be effective in luring teens (and the rest of us), but courts have exercised a bit more skepticism and reserve. Even as hearings, arraignments, and witness testimony moves toward more frequent uses of online technology, the virtual jury has been the last frontier. The main suspicion that has slowed down the pandemic-era momentum toward online jury trials has been the question of whether jurors will maintain the same levels of attention and engagement without in-person presence.
Thanks to some recent research, it appears that we have an answer: They will. In-person and online jurors appear to be generally similar when it comes to composition, process, and outcomes. In particular, the attentiveness and engagement of jurors seems to not depend on whether they are participating in-person or online. The new study, published in Law and Human Behavior (Reed et al., 2026), offers one of those situations in which it took a bit of time for the research to catch up, but in large part it confirmed the experiences of many who now routinely conduct online mock trials in order to assess case risks and prepare for trial. By and large, the results suggest that courts should be open to expanding online proceedings where it makes sense, and parties should be reassured of the value of conducting online jury research. In this post, I’ll review the study and a few of its implications.
The Research:
In a classic case of serendipitous adaptation, the research team was conducting a jury study in 2020, and when the Covid pandemic necessitated a switch from in-person to online protocol they realized they had a unique opportunity to compare the two methods on the same case material. Using 317 research participants, they studied a total of 54 mock juries, 30 of them online and 24 in person. The main finding was one of overall similarity. In an interview quoted by the ABA Journal, University of Texas, El Paso assistant professor, and study lead author, Krystia Reed, noted, “Despite concerns that virtual formats substantially reduce jurors’ attention or change the nature of their deliberations, virtual jurors thoroughly processed relevant evidence and reportedly expended more effort in doing so.”
Specifically, the comparison found:
- The groups had equally thorough evidence discussions
- The groups did not differ significantly on most factors or outcomes
- Online jurors did report expending greater cognitive effort
- In-person jurors were more likely to interrupt each other and to discuss more topics
- Online jurors were younger, wealthier, and more educated
Some Implications
Courts Should Be Open to Expanded Online Use
Short of a new pandemic (I’m frantically knocking on wood, here), there is no urgent need for courts to transition to full online trials anytime soon. At the same time, there are many areas where the use of online technology can lead to improved efficiency and time savings. In King County, Washington, courts have been conducting online jury selections for a couple of years now, and Utah state and federal courts are making the move as well. This recent research showing a lack of substantive deficits when it comes to the attention that jurors bring to their work while online should continue to fuel further experiments in expanded online features.
Parties Should Be Confident in Online Jury Research
Research confirms my own observations, cited in the study, that online jurors can often be more purposeful about turn-taking (because they have to be based on Zoom’s one-speaker-at-a-time audio features), and also tend to be more focused in discussion. Interestingly, the study did find that jurors in-person considered a broader range of topics, but that is not necessarily a good thing. My experience is that, when deliberating online, jurors seem to have a more immediate awareness of the limits on attention, and as a result, they get to the point more quickly.
Litigators Should Pay Attention to Situational Variables in All Settings
One situational variable that did distinguish online from in-person jurors is reported cognitive effort. The finding that jurors online said they exerted greater cognitive effort is interesting. When it comes to attention and decision making, greater cognitive effort is not necessarily a bad thing, especially since they saw no decline in comprehension in the online condition. It may be that the same factor that can sometimes contributes to a perceived “Zoom fatigue” might lead to better, albeit more effortful, engagement. “Increased cognitive load does not inevitably have a negative impact on decision making,” the study authors point out. “In fact, increase in cognitive load (or cognitive effort) can improve information processing.” An online setting may lead to greater engagement and motivation as a byproduct of the fact that the setting requires a somewhat different kind of focused attention.
Even as courtrooms will be understandably cautious in embracing online uses, it appears that we now have a better case for the overall comparability of the online and in-person juries. Just as courts should be open to strategic uses of online opportunities, parties should also feel better about testing their cases online.
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Other Posts on Online Trials:
- Online Trials: Learn from Arizona
- Expect Another Silver Lining to Online Trials: Shadow Juries Just Got Easier and Safer
- Treat Online Trials as an Access-to-Justice Issue
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Reed, K., Hans, V. P., Rotenstein, V. N., McKendall, P., Rodriguez, A., Helm, R. K., & Reyna, V. F. (2026). Virtually the same? A comparison between in-person and virtual mock jury deliberations. Law and Human Behavior. URL: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/lhb-lhb0000643.pdf
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