How to Improve the Jury Summons Process With Scott Kerr

Tyler Podcast Episode 53, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Host and Content Marketing Director Jeff Harrell – and other guest hosts – highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give us listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

Have you received a jury summons in the mail and suddenly your shoulders drop? Your friends say “well, I hope you don’t get selected”. Trial by jury is an important part of our society but the experience can often be one we try to avoid. In Episode 53 of the Tyler Tech Podcast, we talk with Scott Kerr and discuss how local government can improve this experience. Scott is the General Manager of Tyler Technologies’ Jury Solutions business unit. The business specializes in developing software products and services that help courts streamline and improve the jury process. Over a 30-year career, Scott and his team have built and implemented jury management systems all over the world.

Transcript

Scott Kerr: They've actually reduced the number of jurors that they historically have summoned, and they feel, and this is really moving to me. They hear from the community, they feel the community appreciating what they do. They feel the community, they feel that change in reputation, and to me, that's super exciting. I know to them, it's super exciting as well.

Jeff Harrell: From Tyler Technologies, it's the Tyler Tech Podcast, where we talk about issues facing communities today and highlight the people, places and technology making a difference. My name is Jeff Harrell. I'm the director of content marketing here at Tyler Technologies, and I'm so glad that you joined us.

Jeff Harrell: Well, have you ever received a jury summons in the mail and suddenly your shoulders drop. You tell your friends and they say, "Well, I hope you don't get picked." Well, trial by jury is such an important part of our society, but the experience can often be one we try to avoid. Well, today's episode, we talk to Scott Kerr and discuss how local government can improve this experience. Scott   Kerr is the General Manager of Tyler Technologies' Jury Solutions business unit, and that business unit specializes in developing software products and services that help courts streamline and improve the jury process. Over his 30 year career, Scott Kerr and this team have built and implemented jury management systems all over the world. I think you'll be very encouraged at how some simple technology can really make a big difference to both the jurors and to the courts. Here's my conversation with Jeff Harrell. Well, Scott, welcome to the Tyler Tech Podcast.

Scott Kerr: Thanks, Jeff Harrell. Appreciate your time and appreciate being here.

The Negative Feelings Toward Jury Duty

Jeff Harrell: I'm really excited to talk to you because we talked a little bit earlier. A couple of months ago, I received in the mail what a lot of people dread getting in the mail and that was a jury summons. You get it, your shoulders maybe slump a little bit, and you tell your friends about it, and like, "Wow, I hope you don't get picked." Why is that? Why do we feel a negative feeling when we get that jury summons?

Scott Kerr: Yeah, that's a great question, and a very common experience. My response when my friends tell me this is always, "Well, you know what? That's great, you should serve, because it's a really amazing experience." I think what we see very commonly is that reaction that people have, they get the summons, "Oh gosh, one more thing, one more inconvenience in my life." But when people come out the other side of serving on jury duty, they have a really enlightened view. It can be a very positive experience for people to be part of justice and to be participating and to actually see what the wheels of justice really in fact look like. I think the answer to your question is it's about reputation. Jury duty has this really bad rep.

Scott Kerr: I think largely that comes from the notion or some of the experience at least that jurors have, and the most common thought process for people is, gosh, I'm going to have to spend a day or may maybe many days away from my home or from my workplace, from the stuff that really I want to do in my life. Really, what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be sitting in a jury assembly room all day long, bored out of my tree, with members of my community, who I might find annoying, and I might not like very much. Then, layer the pandemic on that, but I might not feel really comfortable being Here. That's, for many people, what they think of when they get that summons in the mail.

Jeff Harrell: I'll tease this a little bit. I'll share a little bit later if I actually served or not, and what that experience might be like, but you've hit on something I think is very common when we do get that summons is that we think, I've got to show up early on a morning, and I'm super busy. So, I've got to take some time off. I've got to show up in a big room full of people. I'm going to sit there for who knows how long. I may or may not get my name called to go into another room. It's just a challenging process, and I know this is something that you're really passionate about, helping improve that process. What are some things that you're working on that actually helps this process?

Scott Kerr: Well, interesting. I think there's some other things that also fuel people's trepidation too. There's some background fear, like what happens if I do get picked? What if I'm on a trial that's really grizzly? Or I'm going to be exposed to some things, and so there's a lot of fear of the unknown. I think that keeps people from...I think generally people want to serve, they want to do their civic duty, but there are these barriers. Another barrier is that a jury summons is really an order by the court. We're telling people what to do. We don't necessarily like to be told what to do, and the first thing we tend to do with jurors when they get that summons, your summons probably said this, very top, "You have been ordered by penalty of law to appear at the court for jury duty." The implication is that if you don't come, we're sending armed guards to your house to drag you in here. People get a fear response to that. People get an oppositional response sometimes to being told what to do too. We began to ask questions about, well, what are these barriers?

Scott Kerr: What is it that's keeping people from serving, and actually having this really interesting experience, a really important experience, in doing something that's really valuable in protecting democracy? Because at the end of the day, trial by jury, it's a fundamental, essential liberty of any free nation and a super important thing for people to do. We began to ask these questions and we can see places where other aspects of society that do a good job of recruitment around the experience, not to say that our customers and courts don't also do that, because they do. They do a lot of outreach and a lot of education and organizations like the National Center for State Courts have got great programs for engaging youth, for example, in jury duty. But I think our work really started around asking these questions, like what are the barriers that keep people from serving or having a greater willingness or want or desire to serve.

Have To Versus Get To

Jeff Harrell: Bring up a good point. Because when I got my summons, the day I was supposed to appear was a Monday morning, and I had a big presentation that next day. I thought, what happens if I don't show up? My first thought was, I'm probably going to get an arrest warrant or something. There was a fear of what happens if I don't show up, and so I showed up. Again, it wasn't because I'd necessarily wanted to, but it was because I felt like what happens if I don't. It was that fear of penalty versus this excitement to get to do something that, like you said, trial by jury is such an important part of the fabric of our society. I guess my question is what can local government do? You mentioned a few things outreach and some other things, but what can they do to maybe turn the tide a little bit from thinking this is something I have to do versus something I get to do.

Scott Kerr: A couple things there, so that fear of prosecution can be really powerful. What we have historically seen is, despite all the great outreach and things that courts do, is it's a common, because it's effective that fear of prosecution, that's the common tool in the toolbox that gets used first is that enforcement mechanism. We began to engage with customers to say, "Well, that's an awful lot of stick and not very much carrot. There surely there are more tools in our toolbox that we can bring to bear here, so that it's not all punishment that we're also doing the encouragement part. Of course, you guys are doing a great job of the educational outreach and all of that. "But when it actually comes to service, what can we do to sort of make it easier and break these barriers down and be more encouraging of people? The enforcement part, and the fear of prosecution part, that's another tool in the toolbox that we're going to need to use, but maybe it doesn't have to be the only tool right that we're using." So, that set off some discussions around the reputation and specifically what we talked about at the top of the conversation, the expectation that people have, that they're going to sit in their jury assembly room for hours, bored out their mind, and they're really not getting the meaningful part of the experience of jury service and doing that. What can we do to break that down? Make it more likely, if you will, or make it easier for people to serve, make it more convenient for them to serve and make it maybe more likely that they actually get to see the inside of a courtroom as opposed to the jury assembly room.

Scott Kerr: It turns out, we actually had something already in place that really helps with that. We had a number of things in place. One of those things was just some in-app communication that was very automated that makes it easier for customers to, for our customer, the court, to engage with jurors through text messaging and email and outbound calls. We found that the greater the number of touch points the court made with jurors leading up to the service, the more likely they were to serve. If we could do that in an automated way, sending reminders, sending information, sending, "Hey, your request to be excused from jury duty has been approved or denied," those kinds of touches that we could actually automate, actually improved jury yield. So, that was a barrier we could help break down. The thing we really discovered is a thing called Online Panel Assignment, kind of a longish name, which really what that means, you can think of it as in fact, direct to the courtroom. A method that would allow courts to preassign, if you will, jurors to an actual voir dire panel, to an actual trial that is on the docket that's going forward.

 

Scott Kerr: All of those qualification steps and things in advance could be done online that led to a juror instead remaining in their home until we really knew needed them, absolutely needed them in the courtroom, to go through the interview process, if you will, that's called voir dire, voire dire in some places, to see if the person is suitable for serving or being impaneled on the jury, hearing evidence in an actual matter that's before the court. We stumbled upon that, in part because our customer in Tarrant County, Texas, had a really nice jury assembly room of a certain size. I think it seats five or 600 people, and there had been a lot of growth in their court. What had been happening to them is that on their jury assembly day, if it was a particularly busy week on the docket, they didn't have enough room in the jury assembly room. Now and again, the fire marshal would come around and say, "Hey, you can't do this. You can't have this many people in this room." They were contemplating all kinds of things like, well, maybe we need to actually make another jury assembly room on the second floor, but then we're going to need to have an elevator on the outside of the building to connect these two rooms and all of this kind of stuff. That got us thinking about, and got our customer, in particular, who really brought this to us thinking about, well, what if we could instead have some number of our jurors that might otherwise be with us in the assembly room, what if instead, we can kind of preassign them to a courtroom.

Scott Kerr: What if we can go direct from the summons to the courtroom assignment? That would balance out our facilities need really. We could have, instead of 500 people in the assembly room, 250 of those people could actually be elsewhere in the courthouse. So, we built that. We built that out and that was really successful, and then we discovered that it had the knock-on effect of actually really helping the court moderate costs, because it meant that they didn't actually have to have jurors come to the courthouse and get paid for their service until they were really absolutely needed. They could actually call them off at a moment's notice, and a juror could remain in their home or at their workplace again until it was absolutely required. That's a facet of jury management too. We have to summon jurors 4, 5, 6 weeks out in advance in order to qualify them and notify them and make sure they make the appropriate arrangements to be at the court. But in that interval, between the time they get their summons and the time they're actually supposed to report, the participants in a matter before the court, they're still negotiating.

Scott Kerr: They're trying to resolve their dispute or their criminal matter right up to the last moment. Lots of times trials settle, or the parties settle, the matter the night before. Lots of times, and in fact, in every juror orientation video that I've ever seen, there's a part of the video that talks about, well, the fact that you're here in the jury assembly room, what that means is elsewhere in the court, they're getting awfully real for the parties to a matter. Just you being here is going to result in plea bargains and settlements in civil matters. It's really, you might not feel like you're doing much, but just the fact that you're here. So, if we could move that to the online world, what we discovered is it really, really helped moderate or create efficiencies in terms of the number of jurors that were actually reporting and actually needed to be paid for that. For that customer, again, it started with a facilities play, but it's resulted in a over a million dollars in savings for that particular court in Tarrant County.

Jeff Harrell: On this podcast, we talk a lot about how we love when technology can help solve real problems. It sounds like this technology in this case, pretty simple. I think it was text messaging mainly, helped solve the problem on the jurors side of, "I don't have to take a block of time. I've got to go in this room with people I don't know. I got to sit there for a long time. Instead, I'm just had my phone near me and seeing if I'm actually needed." The communication, you touched on that, I think that was a good one, because that was one thing in my experience, last couple of months, when I got my jury summons, is I didn't hear anything else, other than that piece of paper I had. That just leads to lack of clarity.

Jeff Harrell: I think I'm supposed to show up if I don't show up, I may get in trouble, but if I'd known, if there'd been a bit more communication, I would've probably felt like I am needed. This is important. I probably would've felt a little bit better. I think that's actually right on the money. So, so this idea of text messaging improves communication, but also allows jurors to show up if they're actually really needed. It's a win on the juror side or the citizen side. But as you pointed out, on the court side, they're saving money. They're saving costs, so it feels like this is a solution. It's pretty simple technology.

Scott Kerr: Yeah. It's everybody wins. This is what I love, love, love about it. Everyone wins. The courts are happier. They're more efficient. They're saving money for the taxpayer, who are also the jurors. The jurors are loving it because it's more convenient for them. They only serve when they're absolutely necessary. And when they do serve, they're really getting the meaningful part out of the experience, which is at least they may be chosen. At least there's a real trial going forward and they may be eligible and suitable for hearing evidence. They might not hear the evidence, but at least they've been in part of that experience and engaged in that experience, rather than the less meaningful, to them, part of the experience of sitting around in a jury assembly room until they're needed. That time could be better spent for members of the public, again, at their homes and in their workplaces.

Jeff Harrell: It's amazing the number of people I've talked to about my experience and pretty much everyone I've spoken to said, "I've been called 5, 6, 7 times and never selected." That goes into this idea of, "I'm going to show up, but they're not going to need me. This is going to be a waste of time." I'm also, being in marketing, I understand how powerful word of mouth is. I can imagine if you experienced what you described, which is this really great communication via text and only showing up when you're needed and giving the opportunity to feel like you're making a difference, I'm going to tell everyone, I know, "Hey, if you get a summons, it's not bad. It's actually really good." it's word of mouth. I think that's going to help our clients as well is that I know they're trying to change that feeling of when you get that jury summons, that word of mouth could really help as well.

Scott Kerr: For sure. I mean, Steve Martin very famously sent out a bunch of jokes by way of Twitter a few years ago, lampooning jury duty as though he were actually serving. It turned out that he wasn't. There was a lot of speculation that he was, but he wasn't. Not that we want to take away material for Steve Martin, but we do want to change the channel in that communication. We don't want it so much to be the butt of jokes, and that's the part of the experience that I think is the low-hanging fruit and what we're after. But like an interesting thing too, Jeff Harrell, for us, is that this was work that we had had done some number of years ago, but then you add suddenly the pandemic into the equation. This became a real challenge for courts because the heretofore, the fundamental business process has been, "Hey, let's get a whole bunch of people together from all corners of the area into a big room, shoulder to shoulder." Well, pretty immediately, we couldn't do that. This really during the pandemic shown a light on the kind of functionality here that you rightly point out, it's text messaging, there's some other business process flow that's part of it as well, that enables all of this to work efficiently.

Scott Kerr: But there was a real time for adaptation for the courts. I think what's really interesting for us now is to see how the adaptations that courts had to make during the pandemic, how they're thinking about them now, pandemic shown a light on how or required courts to adapt and to do things differently. That now that we are maybe out of the worst of it, knock on wood, what I think is really interesting is how courts are also now rethinking, how it's caused them to rethink, maybe this is a good approach to begin with. Maybe this is something we should continue because it's been very successful for us. We have a customer in Okaloosa County, Florida, who's a huge proponent of Online Panel Assignment and very challenged in their area during the pandemic and really challenged on the revenue side as it's anchored to their budget. They were really in a position and being forced to do an awful lot less with a lot less budget and look at reducing staff compliment in various areas.

Scott Kerr: They seconded staff to help in hospitals and things like that. They had fewer staff to be able to even manage the jury process, but they found that they could just be more efficient and then they post pandemic, we can say that, they also were concerned that they might actually have to summon many more people. They were worried about their jury yield, because they thought coming back to the old way of doing business, jurors would be afraid. They'd be afraid of being in a room with people. They'd be afraid of COVID. And so a way of coping with that was to continue to use Online Panel Assignment, and they had a very similar experience. It's been very efficient for them. They've actually reduced the number of jurors that they historically have summoned, and they feel, and this is really moving to me. They hear from the community, they feel the community appreciating what they do. They feel the community, they feel that kind of change in reputation. To me, that's super exciting. I know to them it's super exciting as well. It's what moves us to get out of bed in the morning.

Jeff Harrell: Well, Scott Kerr, we've talked a lot about really improving the experience, the communication leading up to actually the day that you may not show up, because you're getting this better communication or getting this text messaging when you're actually needed. But I would like to touch on the actual process of serving, because I said, I teased it a little bit. I actually got to serve on a jury two months ago. It was an aggravated assault case, and it was interesting because I was juror number 44, they picked 14. That shows you how many excuses people made when going through the process of the lawyers asking questions. People were basically saying whatever they could to get thrown out of the jury, but I found the experience, and it was about a three day trial, to be fascinating, to be challenging, heart wrenching, all of those things.

Civic Duty

Jeff Harrell: But at the end of the day, and particularly at the end when the lawyers come in on both sides and just give their appreciation for the service that we have for the jury, the judge comes in and does the same. You leave with this civic pride, this, I was part of the process. The person that had the trial got his day in court, so to speak. Talk a little bit about that, because I know you're very passionate about this.

Scott Kerr: Well, I think that, again, I think that's a very common experience people have. They get the summons in the mail. They have reluctance, they have fear. They don't really want to do it. They know, in the back of their mind, it's their duty and they should do that, and people have a sense of patriotism and duty. Then the experience when they serve is often just exactly as you've described it. It's hard, but it's also enlightening. The feeling that you're left with at the end of the day is you were part of something, and I think that something is participatory democracy at the end of the day. This is why I say that trial by jury is just one of the essential freedoms of a free society. How it serves us is in many fundamental ways. It's also a way that probably the majority of people come into contact with justice. Not everyone goes through their lives being involved in criminal matters or involved in civil trials and disputes and things. But everybody pretty well has a jury duty experience to share. You're likely to get summoned once in your life.

Scott Kerr: It's also an area where people actually have this direct experience with, with justice. It's a real opportunity. It's a real opportunity for the courts. It's a real opportunity for jurors. It's a way of creating an opportunity to strengthen people's confidence in the justice system. There's a saying in, I've heard it in Canadian law circles. I'm a Canadian, in fact, and that the expression is that, "Justice must not only be done, it must manifestly be seen to be done." I think that's also one of those things that trial by jury brings to us. The experience of serving is that we're actually seeing justice at work, and it's an opportunity at least to develop confidence in it. It's also an opportunity to see all of it, the good, the bad and the ugly. It's not perfect, I'm sure, but it's the best system we've got. I think that's why my advice to friends that call me and say, "Hey, I've got a summons. How do I get out of it?" My response is, "Well, you better go and serve because you're going to have an experience that will enlighten you."

Jeff Harrell: That was definitely my experience is, I didn't want to go, I was reluctant. I had that big presentation the next day, but once I did get picked and got to serve, it was fascinating. Like I said, difficult, challenging, but at the end of the day, just a great overall experience. You mentioned, Scott Kerr, a few of the clients that you've worked with. Any others, any other client stories you can share with us, of people you've worked with that have really made a difference in this area?

Scott Kerr: Sure. In Santa Barbara, California, quite recently, a really high profile, very grizzly trial going on. They have been using both Online Panel Assign a little bit, and the text messaging features of the application. There was a bomb threat at the courthouse, somehow may potentially related to this very high profile trial going on. Because of this, the text messaging features and Online Panel Assignment, they were able to actually just blast out a text to people that were meant to be serving on this jury duty, not to come to the courthouse, not to in fact, come to the downtown area because of the threat. Thankfully, it was just a threat, a hoax.

Scott Kerr: But what if it weren't, was the messaging that we got from the customer. They were calling to share the story, but there was a lot of gratitude. Like, what if this had been real? So, some of the stuff, some of the work that you do, you might take for granted really easily. You don't realize that it can be potentially super, super impactful for the customers in this way. So, that's a story of a customer who's had a real visceral experience with this. I know that Dallas County, Texas, has been experimenting with Online Panel Assignment as well. I heard the other day that they're out looking to make a more fulsome rollout of that and use it in more trials. This is the great thing about it is, it's not a necessary and prescriptive business process that the customers are required to do in every trial. They can pick and choose what are the kinds of trials where they want to do this.

Scott Kerr: For example, in Tarrant County, they don't use Online Panel Assignment in murder trials, and that's in part because these are the kinds of matters before the court that they take. There's more information to gather. There's more education to provide, and that really has to happen in person. So, Online Panel Assignment may not be appropriate in every instance. We recognize that, and it has that flexibility for customers to use it as much, or as little as they think is appropriate in their local court.

Jeff Harrell: Well, this has been great, Scott Kerr. If someone wanted to find out more information, wanted to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Scott Kerr: Well, I think the Tyler website, for sure, but they're certainly welcome to call, reach out to me on Teams, hit up our Vancouver office here, anytime they like.

Jeff Harrell: That's Tylertech.com. Is there certain place in the website they should go?

Scott Kerr: The jury product pages probably.

Jeff Harrell: Awesome. Well, Scott Kerr, thanks so much. This is a fascinating topic, and I think for everyone, because I think all of us have some experience in this. Really appreciate the work that you're doing, the passion that you have around this too, and just the opportunity to make this experience better for people, because it is so meaningful to actually get the opportunity to serve your community in this way. So, thanks so much.

Scott Kerr: Well, pleasure's all mine, Jeff, thank you for having me.

Jeff Harrell: Well, I definitely wish they'd had that technology when I served a few months ago. Although, I will say the overall experience, as I mentioned in the episode was great. Highly recommend. If you get an opportunity to serve on a jury, to do so.

Jeff Harrell: Well, hope you enjoyed that conversation. We drop a brand new episode of the Tyler Tech podcast every other Monday, so please subscribe. We have a lot of great episodes planned throughout the rest of 2022 and on into 2023. So, for Tyler Technologies, this is Jeff Harrell, director of content marketing for Tyler Technologies. We'll talk to you soon.