13 Trial Lawyer • Summer 2023 Similarly, when attorneys develop and organize a focus group, we can control the demographics of the participants. We can target, or at least know, the characteristics of the participants that we feel are important in any given case. When opinions or ideas are crowdsourced off social media, we lose all control over these things. Sara might rely on video of a fire appearing to ignite in a tanker truck, then spreading to industrial storage tanks, when the truth was that a leak from the storage tanks actually spread to the pavement under the truck before catching fire. Channing might rely on the whistleblowers who self-identified on social media, not realizing that they were imposters intending to sabotage the multi-million dollar hostile work environment case. And Carlo might think his case is hopeless because he does not know that 95% of the users interacting with his case synopsis are from the same demographic known to disfavor cases like his. Conclusion I have an attorney friend who was assisting with a high-stakes case against a foreign manufacturer where a crucial jurisdiction dispute hinged on whether a physical plant in Australia actually existed. When my friend was invited to a wedding in Hawaii, he took the opportunity to take the twenty-three hour, round trip flight to Sydney. He was only in Australia for five hours, but when he left he had irrefutable proof the defendant in his case was lying. Today, he could answer the same question in several minutes using Google Earth. What else? I’m old, but.... Scott Lucas practices personal injury, medical malpractice and product liability law. Lucas contributes to OTLA Guardians at the Guardians Club level. He is a shareholder at Johnson Johnson Lucas & Middleton, 975 Oak St., Ste. 1050, Eugene, OR 97401. He can be reached at 541-4842434 or slucas@justicelawyers.com.
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