Litigation Support

Serving in the trenches with the tobacco companies during the unprecedented onslaught of litigation from nearly every Attorney General in the U.S. taught our team a few things about high-stakes litigation and the important role of opinion research.

In some cases, managing communications outside the courtroom (the court of public opinion) is just as important as what goes on inside.

Our Approach

Our core litigation support capabilities center around three common sets of questions:

Landscape assessment: What's the overall tone of public opinion in the county where we're going to trial? Is this an area where people are likely to be for us or against us? Should we mount a public-facing campaign to influence opinions outside of the courtroom?

Message strategy: What's the best strategy for conditioning the external environment? What messages should we use to move the needle within the court of public opinion?

Juror profiles: What are some of the key demographic characteristics of people (potential jurors) who are likely to agree with our side? What's the profile of those who are likely to be less sympathetic to our case?

Our litigation support work is typically grounded in quantitative public opinion research. From there, we determine if additional focus group research is necessary.

Message Development