TrialFocus was founded by lawyers who used focus groups to test the strengths and weaknesses of their own civil litigation cases.
Marcus Castillo
Marcus, a member of the Clearwater law firm Haas & Castillo, PLLC, is a Florida Bar board-certified labor and employment lawyer with extensive experience trying a broad spectrum of civil disputes ranging from employment discrimination to personal injury to civil rights to commercial litigation. He served for years on the Florida Bar Employment Law Trial Skills Course faculty.
Lee Haas
Lee also is a member of Haas & Castillo, PLLC, and is a Florida Bar board-certified business litigation attorney with a reputation for aggressively pursuing corporate, construction and related cases and serves on the Florida Supreme Court Committee on Standard Jury Instructions – Contract and Business Cases.
Both Marcus and Lee were curious to see how juries viewed their clients’ on-the-stand performance as well as their case themes and arguments. Focus groups were the “practice field” that let them experiment with their cases without fear of the result.
After years of in-house trial simulations colleagues began asking Marcus and Lee to conduct focus groups for them. From these requests TrialFocus was born. TrialFocus is one of a handful of trial consulting enterprises in the country run and staffed by lawyers. This enables us to portray the opposition in all phases of a trial. We are equipped with video production capabilities and with access to facilities ranging from an office conference room to a mock courtroom. TrialFocus has the ability to mobilize a focus group panel that is demographically specific (or specific as to defined attitudes) on short notice.
