Problem: Scientific jury selection is limited to the largest firms usually making over hundreds of millions of dollars a year. When selecting juries, attorneys of other, smaller, firms have only the information they get through asking questions to make their selection. This can be greatly improved by providing attorneys with a tool that allows them to do data mining from social media and any other sources and aggregate it to a probability of how that juror is likely to vote.<p>A tool that gives an attorney more insight into jurors would be incredibly valuable to them. If you have millions on the line, paying even a few hundred to get information about a potential jury is a bargain.<p>While giving one attorney a strong advantage, thereby effecting the outcome of a case, can seem questionable, the justice system designed jury selection to be in the lose/lose quadrant of possible scenarios. Ideally a more equitable and fair jury is chosen by both attorneys eliminating those against them as best they can. This also means though should one attorney have an effective tool selecting jurors others are highly incentivized to use that same tool. This should produce a strong network effect for my product.
How does that actually work? Do lawyers get names and addresses of potential jurors in advance? How much in advance? Assuming they do, what exactly do you do with that information?<p>Let's say the juror is "Joe Smith from Alabama". What is the probability that:<p>1. he has a twitter account<p>2. he provided his full name in the account<p>3. Which of the following accounts belong to that particular Joe Smith: <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=users&q=joe%20smith" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/search?f=users&q=joe%20smith</a> ?<p>What other "social media" data can you provide? Facebook? (it's mostly private and not available for low-grade stalking). Tinder?<p>What is your addressable market? How many jury selections there are in US where "millions are on the line"? And if there really are "millions on the line", can't they afford $250/hr jury consultant?<p>How did you validate your idea? How many attorneys at small companies did you talk to? What is the "incredible value" of attorney knowing twitter posts of a potential juror?
How will you generate confidence that your product actually works at the beginning, when you have no track record?<p>Why should a lawyer trust the outcome of an important case with "millions on the line" to an unknown startup rather than do what they do now to select juries (go with their gut, whatever)?
Have you researched different jurisdictions? I am dismayed that the lawyers would be given so much information about potential jurors a week in advance. Seems to run counter to the idea that jurors are selected from "peers".<p>Technically, you would be doing a lot of site scraping and that would take a sizeable investment in development. Of course, assuming that you don't first need to enter the details from hardcopy. Even if you get the information in electronic form, it will probably be different for different courts, states, etc.
Very cool idea. How hard would it be to process the data in a meaningful way? Are you familiar with the psychology behind it? Is it "standarized" somewhere or rules of thumb that most people agree on with jury selection?
I like this idea. A friend of my co-founder created something similar, albeit with key differences, for politics (AppleCart). They are seeing some great success so far, you may want to reach out to them.
Definitely a lot of potential here. Is the jury info public at all? Or is it limited to attorneys? ie. Once an attorney sends you info about a particular jury, can you reuse that information for something else?
> <i>aggregate it to a probability of how that juror is likely to vote.</i><p>This would require knowledge of the case and case law. Which would then require a full AI.