Group voir dire is a tricky business – it’s not easy to get a court-roomful of jurors to speak up and readily disclose the biases that will hurt you. Despite this general difficulty, there are a few advantages to jury selection in an employment case. The most obvious is that your court-roomful of jurors have many relevant experiences, opinions and biases that they’d love to spill, if only they had the chance. I’ve found that in group voir dire situations, the best strategy is to come armed with a short list of very good questions and aim to have the greatest number of potential jurors answer those questions. When you approach voir dire this way, you experience the following benefits: The judge will hear jurors talking, not lawyers talking. I’ve never heard a judge tell jurors to “hurry it up” when they are speaking but I’ve heard many a judge give lawyers “the hook” when question after question hangs in the air unanswered. The jurors hear each other talking. This encourages them to feel more comfortable to respond. It also makes them feel more positive about the voir dire experience: When jurors are asked questions to which they can both…