Terms of Service

These terms are an agreement between you and Texas Jury Study. By creating an account, joining a session or requesting a focus group, you accept them. If you do not accept them, do not use the service.

Two groups use this platform and their obligations are different, so this document is split accordingly. Throughout, a participant is someone who joins a paid session as a mock juror, and a requestee is the attorney, firm, mediator or adjuster who requests the study. Sections 4 and 5 apply to one group each. Every other section applies to everybody.

Separately from these terms, both groups sign a short confidentiality agreement inside the app before reaching a dashboard. That agreement stands on its own and these terms are meant to sit alongside it, not replace it.

You must be at least 18 years old to use this service.

Participants must additionally be residents of Texas, because the whole point of the panel is to reflect a Texas jury pool.

Jury service in Texas has statutory eligibility requirements, and our panels mirror them. When you complete the participant sign-up form, your account is automatically marked ineligible for future sessions if you indicate that you are not a US citizen or that you have a felony conviction. This is not a judgement about you; it is how we keep the panel representative of people who could actually be seated on a jury.

• Give us accurate information and keep it current. Much of what we ask for determines which sessions you are matched to, so wrong answers waste everyone’s time.
• One account per person. Duplicate accounts may be removed, and duplicates created to collect more than one payment for the same session will be treated as fraud.
• Keep your password to yourself. You are responsible for activity under your account.
• Tell us promptly at info@texasjurystudy.com if you think someone else has access to your account.

Showing up matters

Sessions are built around a fixed panel size. When someone accepts an invitation and then does not appear, the study is compromised for everyone. So accepting an invitation is a commitment.

Confidentiality

Everything you see and hear in a session is confidential and for private use only. You agree not to discuss, publish, post or share any case, document, argument or discussion from a session with anyone outside it.

You also acknowledge something with real legal consequence: by taking part, you are disqualified from serving as a juror in any case discussed during a session. If you are ever summoned for jury duty on a matter you recognise from one of our sessions, you must disclose your participation to the court.

Recording

Sessions are recorded in full and the recording is given to the requesting firm. One observer from that firm may also attend live without speaking. By joining a session you consent to being recorded on that basis. You may not make your own recording of a session, or screenshot, copy or redistribute any material shown to you.

Getting paid

Participation is paid. The amount offered for a given session is stated in the invitation you receive; payment is sent to the PayPal username on your profile after the session, provided you attended and took part properly. Keep that username accurate, because we cannot pay you if it is wrong.

Payment is sent as a PayPal “service” payment, and PayPal takes a processing fee out of it — in practice about $2 to $3. That fee is PayPal’s, not ours, and it comes off the amount stated in your invitation, so what lands in your account is that amount less the fee.

Payments are made to you as an independent participant, not as an employee. You are responsible for any tax you owe on them, and we may need tax information from you before paying if your total payments reach the threshold at which reporting is required.

Give us your honest opinion

The entire value of the exercise is candour. Do not research the case outside the session, do not coordinate your answers with other participants, and do not tell us what you think an attorney wants to hear. There are no right answers.

Fees

Studies are priced per hour of session time, at a rate that depends on the format you choose for the case:

• Online — conducted over Zoom — $850 per hour
• In person — conducted at a venue we arrange — $1,500 per hour

In either format you also pay $100 for each demographic or eligibility filter you apply to narrow the panel. The app shows you a full breakdown before you confirm a case, and that breakdown is the quote. Payment arrangements are handled directly with our team.

What a focus group is, and is not

Materials you upload

• You confirm you have the right to share everything you upload or link to, and that doing so breaches no court order, protective order, sealing order or duty you owe to anyone.
• You are responsible for redacting privileged material and anything you are not permitted to disclose. We do not review your uploads for privilege, and we cannot un-see material once a panel has seen it.
• You keep ownership of your materials. You grant us a limited licence to store them and show them to participants and staff purely in order to run your study.

Confidentiality on your side

All materials, discussions, participant responses and outcomes tied to a study are confidential. You agree not to record, distribute, disclose or reuse anything from a session outside the scope of the study, and to keep the recording we provide within your firm and its client for that matter.

Participants are real people who gave us sensitive personal information on the understanding that you would never see it. You must not attempt to identify, contact or research any participant, and you must not use anything from a session to their detriment.

Scheduling and approval

Cases are submitted for review and we may approve, decline or ask you to change a request. Session dates are proposed and confirmed through the app. We may need to reschedule if too few eligible participants are available, and we will tell you as soon as we know.

• Impersonate anyone, or give false information at sign-up.
• Try to access records belonging to another user, or probe, scan or test the security of the platform.
• Scrape, bulk-download or reverse-engineer any part of the service.
• Harass, threaten or discriminate against another user or a member of staff, during a session or otherwise.
• Upload malware, or anything unlawful.
• Use the service to gather information about jurors, parties or witnesses in an actual pending case.

The platform itself — the software, design, text and branding — belongs to Texas Jury Study. These terms give you permission to use it for its intended purpose and nothing more. Case materials remain the property of whoever uploaded them, as set out in section 5.

The service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

We do not guarantee that:

• the service will be uninterrupted or error-free;
• a session will produce a panel of any particular size or exact demographic composition, since it depends on who is available and accepts;
• focus-group results correlate with the outcome of any real proceeding.

To the fullest extent permitted by Texas law, Texas Jury Study is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost business or the outcome of any legal matter, arising from your use of the service.

Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to the amount you paid us, or we paid you, in the twelve months before the claim arose.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including liability for fraud.

You agree to indemnify Texas Jury Study against claims, losses and reasonable legal costs arising from your breach of these terms, your breach of the confidentiality agreement you signed, or — for requestees — from the materials you uploaded, including any claim that sharing them was not yours to authorise.

You may stop using the service at any time and ask us to close your account by emailing info@texasjurystudy.com.

We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, reaches the strike limit in section 4, is ineligible under section 2, or that we reasonably believe is fraudulent. Where the reason is administrative rather than serious misconduct we will normally tell you why.

Confidentiality obligations, the juror-disqualification acknowledgement in section 4, and sections 7 through 10 survive the end of your account.

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects your rights or obligations we will email registered users and update the “last updated” date above, rather than relying on you to re-read this page. Continuing to use the service after a change means you accept it. If you do not, close your account.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Texas, and both sides consent to those courts.

Questions about these terms go to info@texasjurystudy.com.

How we handle the information you give us is covered separately in our Privacy Policy.