New · From the founder of JuryBoard

Picked to Win

A smarter way to pick your next jury.

Nearly every other part of trial gets taught, coached, and drilled. Voir dire gets a war story over lunch and a piece of advice that amounts to trust your gut. This book teaches the method instead: what information actually matters, how to draw it out of people trying to be polite in public, and how to hold onto it until the strikes come.

Read the first chapter free Buy the book — $49

The sample is 32 pages, includes the full introduction and Chapter 1, and you are welcome to forward it to anyone.

David Sugden

Cover of Picked to Win: A Smarter Way to Pick Your Next Jury, by David Sugden
214 pages · 46 diagrams · 4 appendices
What this is

A method, not a script.

There is no list of magic questions in this book, and no personality typology that sorts strangers into boxes. What is here is a repeatable way to work a panel: what to listen for, how to write it down, and how to decide when the court gives you thirty minutes and a room full of people you have never met.

The five tensions that predict deliberations

Not demographics. The handful of underlying attitudes that actually explain how a juror will argue in the room once the door closes.

Notes that survive the afternoon

A note that says leader is a verdict you reached in four seconds. Two hours later you cannot reconstruct what the juror actually said. There is a better way to write it down.

Peremptories as a budget

You have six. Spending them in the order jurors annoy you is not a strategy. Here is how to hold one back and still get the panel you need.

Why confidence is not insight

The research on how badly people read strangers is unkind to trial lawyers. It is also useful, once you know which parts of your instinct to keep.

The mistakes on both ends of a career

Young lawyers ask for promises. Experienced lawyers stop listening. The failure modes are different and both are fixable.

One selection, start to finish

Chapter 14 walks a single voir dire from the first panel list to the last strike, with the reasoning shown at every decision.

Look inside

Forty-six diagrams, and each one is a page you can work from.

Every chapter ends in something you can run. The diagrams turn the arguments into one-page references, and the appendices collect the question banks, checklists, and worksheets on their own.

Diagram from Chapter 7 pairing five juror tensions with the single question that surfaces each one.
Chapter 7. Five tensions, five questions. The whole question plan for most trials fits on one page, with the follow-up bank doing the real work. Variations for each family are in Appendix A.
Diagram from Chapter 11 showing a strike ledger ranking four jurors as strike first, hold, hold and question, or live with.
Chapter 11. The strike ledger. Six strikes cannot clear four jurors when the other side is spending too, so the ledger turns a panic into a plan.
Diagram from Chapter 3 showing time pressure, the public setting, and cognitive load narrowing what jurors reveal.
Chapter 3. Three constraints narrow the channel. The method has to work inside what is left, rather than pretend the walls are not there.
Diagram from Chapter 10 showing the three phases of questioning and the different job each one has.
Chapter 10. Three phases, three jobs. Each phase offers a different ratio of attention to opportunity, so each gets a different job.
Contents

Six parts, built in order.

Each part stands on its own, but they are sequenced. Part I changes what you are looking for, which is what makes the mechanics in Part III worth learning.

Part I

What Jury Selection Really Is

  1. 1Jury Selection Is an Information Problem
  2. 2The Real Objectives of Jury Selection
  3. 3The Constraints No One Talks About
Part II

The Psychology of Jurors, Without the Nonsense

  1. 4First Impressions and Cognitive Shortcuts
  2. 5Beliefs, Identity, and Worldview
  3. 6Truthfulness, Performance, and Social Pressure
Part III

The Mechanics of Effective Voir Dire

  1. 7Asking Better Questions
  2. 8Listening Is a Skill
Part IV

Execution: Making Decisions in Real Time

  1. 9Before Any Juror Speaks
  2. 10Listening While the Clock Is Running
  3. 11Strikes, Substitutions, and the Moment Judgment Is Required
Part V

Common Mistakes, and How to Fix Them

  1. 12What Young Lawyers Get Wrong
  2. 13What Experienced Lawyers Get Wrong
Part VI

Putting It All Together

  1. 14A Complete Jury Selection Walkthrough
  2. ASample Voir Dire Questions
  3. BJuror Trait Checklist
  4. CJury Selection Prep Worksheets
  5. DQuick-Reference Guides
214Pages
14Chapters
46Diagrams
4Appendices
The pages themselves

Designed to be used at counsel table.

Set in a readable text face on a warm page, with the figures drawn rather than photographed. It is a book you can work from during a break, not a PDF you skim once.

Interior page: chapter opening
Introduction — chapter opening
Interior page: figure and running text
Part II — figure and running text

Two of 214 pages. The free sample is the complete first chapter, thirty-two pages, not an excerpt assembled for marketing.

Who it is for

Both ends of the bar, for different reasons.

Five years in or fewer

Start at Chapter 1 and read it straight through.

Nobody taught you this and you are about to be handed a panel. The book gives you a structure to walk in with, language that does not sound like a deposition, and a way to take notes that will still make sense when you have to strike.

Appendix A gives you questions to start from. Appendix C gives you the worksheets to prepare with.

Twenty years in or more

Start at Chapter 1 anyway.

You have picked more juries than most. What you probably have not done is examine the method you built by accident in your first decade and have run on ever since.

Parts II and V are the ones that tend to sting, which is the point of them.

David Sugden
The author

David Sugden

Dave is a business trial lawyer who tries high-stakes jury cases nationally, for plaintiffs and for defendants. He teaches evidence, depositions, expert testimony, and trial practice at evidenceattrial.com, and he built JuryBoard, the iPad application that runs the method in this book on a screen instead of a legal pad.

This book is what he wishes someone had handed him before his first voir dire.

  • Nov 2025Defense verdict, 12–0, in under two hours — Beverly Hills
  • Jun 2025$8,685,192 plaintiff’s verdict — Orange County
  • Feb 2025Complete defense verdict, unanimous — Orange County
  • RecognitionTrial Lawyer of the Year · ABOTA · Top 50 Super Lawyers, Orange County 2020–2023
On paper or on screen

Every method in this book runs on paper.

The note system, the tension grid, the strike ledger: all of it works with a legal pad and a pen, and the book teaches it that way first. If you would rather run it on an iPad, JuryBoard is the tool built for exactly this method, and the book points to it where it helps. You do not need it to use the book.

See JuryBoard
§ Get the book
Free sample
Free
  • Full introduction and Chapter 1
  • Complete table of contents
  • 32 pages, PDF
  • Yours to forward to anyone

Email required. One message when the sample lands, and nothing else unless you ask.

Send me the sample
The book
$49one time
  • All 14 chapters, 214 pages
  • 46 diagrams and reference pages
  • Appendices A through D
  • Complete walkthrough in Chapter 14
  • Instant PDF download

Purchased through Payhip. Yours to keep, on every device you own.

Buy Picked to Win
Firm license
Firms
  • Distribute to every lawyer in the firm
  • Associate training and trial-team onboarding
  • Pairs with the Evidence at Trial membership

Pricing on request.

Ask about firm pricing

What format is it?

A single PDF, 11 MB, designed for reading on a laptop or an iPad and for printing the worksheets. No DRM and no reader application to install.

Who is it stamped to?

Your name is set into the file at purchase. It is a light deterrent to casual sharing, not a restriction on how you use your own copy.

Can my firm buy copies for the trial team?

Yes. A firm license covers distribution to every lawyer in the firm, and it is the usual way associates and trial teams get a copy. Ask and we will send terms.

Does it cover criminal cases?

The book is about how jurors decide, not about the cause of action, so the method works either way and the text does not sort itself into civil and criminal. What it does not do is walk through the procedures particular to criminal selection.

Is it included in the membership?

No. The membership covers the four courses and the member library. The book is sold on its own, through Payhip.

Start here

Start with the sample. It is the real first chapter.

Thirty-two pages, free, no card. If the method is not for you, you will know by the end of it and it will have cost you an afternoon.

Send me chapter one Buy the book — $49