Happy New Year!

For The Jury Expert, it’s especially good to turn the calendar year. In 2008, TJE went digital. We debuted in May, 2008 on the web in the form of downloadable PDF files. Now, especially for 2009, you can read The Jury Expert entirely on-line.

You can still download and forward and print–everything you could do before. But now, you can read articles on-line in addition to downloading AND you can easily comment on what you’re reading. And we WANT you to comment!!!

When we revamped this publication to be entirely on the web, our hope was to have your comments on articles published along-side the articles so that a dialogue could develop between litigators, consultants, academics, and other subscribers that would inform, challenge and stimulate us all. But first, we had to see if you liked where the American Society of Trial Consultants was going with this publication. (And you like us, you really like us!)

The Jury Expert is truly unique in legal publications–both in content and in our now interactive website. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to our web designer/developer, Marc Lazo who took our original ideas and made them into a reality on the web. Now, much like TJE articles strive to turn research and theory into practice, Marc and his associates have refined and expanded the website for The Jury Expert from our non-technical dreams to a reality meant to work for you with an intuitive ease.

We also want to thank ASTC’s David Fish for designing the sample ASTC ads you see throughout the print version and on the web. We’ll start advertising in The Jury Expert this year to help ASTC defray costs of the publication.

 So. Look around. Speak up! Comment. Interact. Tell us what you like and don’t like. Even though it goes without saying–keep your comments professional and courteous even when/if you disagree. Happy 2009. Read on. Write in. And keep requesting article topics (we’re hitting another requested topic this issue).  

  
                                        — Rita R. Handrich, PhD, Editor, The Jury Expert