The Squawk Point

Organisational Mechanics

  • Home
  • Blog
    • People
    • Data
    • Process
    • Wild Cards
    • Index
  • Podcast
  • Book

Legal Eagles

5 February, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

The BBC ran a story yesterday about the effectiveness of the jury system.  A two year research programme looking at 68,000 verdicts has been undertaken.

They came up with the following statistics:

70% of jurors said they understood the judge’s instructions.
31% of jurors actually could recall the judge’s instructions.
48% of jurors could recall the judge’s instructions when they were written down.
Overall the system was believed to be fair.

As a result the Judicial Studies Board now recommends that written instructions are given to juries.

This lead me to a number of observations:

1. What people say they will remember and what they do are two very different things.

2.  If you want somebody to remember something write it down for them.

3.  The Judges instructions are irrelevant (the system was shown to be fair despite the fact that only 31% of jurors could remember the instructions).

OK, perhaps the last point was a little contentious.

The real point?  If it seems like a sensible thing to do (writing down the instructions) maybe it is better to get on with it than waiting for 2 years of analysis.

Photo by Gus Ruballo on Unsplash

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement Tagged With: error proofing, legal system, work instructions

About the Author

James Lawther
James Lawther

James Lawther is a middle-aged, middle manager.

To reach this highly elevated position he has worked in numerous industries, from supermarket retailing to tax collecting.  He has had several operational roles, including running the night shift in a frozen pea packing factory and carrying out operational research for a credit card company.

As you can see from his C.V. he has either a wealth of experience or is incapable of holding down a job.  If the latter is true this post isn’t worth a minute of your attention.

Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to read it and decide for yourself.

www.squawkpoint.com/

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Explore

accountability assumptions beliefs best practice blame bureaucracy capability clarity command and control communication complexity continuous improvement cost saving culture customer focus data is not information decisions employee performance measures empowerment error proofing fessing up gemba human nature incentives information technology innovation key performance indicators learning management style measurement motivation performance management poor service process control purpose reinforcing behaviour service design silo management systems thinking targets teamwork test and learn trust video waste

Receive Posts by e-Mail

Get the next post delivered straight to your inbox

Creative Commons

This information from The Squawk Point is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Creative Commons Licence
Customer Experience Update

Try This:

  • Circles of Influence: Do You Want Your Team Flexing Their’s?

  • Should You Punish Mistakes?

  • Fish Bone Diagrams – Helpful or Not?

  • Solutioneering

Connect

  • E-mail
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • YouTube
  • Cookies
  • Contact Me

Copyright © 2025 · Enterprise Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in