Next week, I will be moderating and speaking to my fellow personal injury attorneys at a Michigan Association for Justice seminar. The topic is voir dire, or the questioning of prospective jurors.
Voir dire is conducted by lawyers and by a judge in court. It’s a process that’s used to determine if any juror is biased in a way that would tend to favor one side over another in a trial. Voir dire can be as simple as finding out if a juror already knows one of the parties or lawyers or it can be more complicated, like the insurance company executive who is asked to serve on a No-Fault insurance trial on overdue and owing insurance benefits.
In my opinion, voir dire is the most important part of trial. It is far more important than the opening statement or closing argument. In t