Trial Lawyers Must Tune Into New Media Trends to Read Courtroom

Intense public scrutiny is nothing new for American courtrooms. But the speed and scale of today’s media environment have fundamentally changed the game for trial attorneys.

The rapid expansion of the true crime ecosystem has been supercharged by social media and artificial intelligence, forcing trial counsel to abandon the comfortable separation between courtroom tactics and public narrative.

In all phases of a high-profile case, trial lawyers must account for how every courtroom participant receives and processes extrajudicial information about their client.

I served as a US Attorney, federal prosecutor, and most recently as special prosecutor in 2025 in State v. Kohberger, where Bryan Kohberger was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of four University of Idaho students after pleading guilty just weeks before trial. I’ve seen firsthand how online misinformation, influencer commentary, and the 24-hour news cycle can shape jury pools, distort witness memories, and ultimately threaten the trial process.

Trial attorneys can no longer afford to compartmentalize the “court of public opinion” from the nuts and bolts of trial preparation—the two are now inextricably linked.

Managing Messaging

Trial attorneys have an obligation to manage their client’s public narrative, not just their legal strategy. Preserving a client’s right to a fair trial isn’t a passive endeavor. Gone are the days when trial lawyers could rely on a client’s public relations team to craft external messaging.

Those messages will ultimately reverberate in the courtroom. Trial lawyers must engage with their clients to help design accurate and consistent messages and then revisit them as the case develops or as misinformation spreads.

Motion practice is an underused communications tool. In a high-profile case, the media will scour even the most mundane procedural motions for hints of case strategy or previews of witness testimony.

Trial attorneys shouldn’t file motions for PR purposes, but every motion is an opportunity to establish case themes and correct the record before a jury is ever seated. In the Kohberger case, even our scheduling hearings previewed relevant evidence at trial, presenting risks and opportunities as we sought to educate the court about our jury selection concerns.

The press also covered every procedural move in detail. This level of scrutiny demands that trial counsel think several moves ahead, not just in terms of the law, but in terms of how publicity will affect the jury pool.

Social Media Contamination

Misinformation is unavoidable and can corrupt witness memories, perceptions, and willingness to cooperate. When preparing witnesses—including friendly ones—trial attorneys must go beyond the “who, what, when, where, and why” of anticipated testimony to understand how each witness has been shaped by media coverage of the case.

Has the witness been covered in reporting on the case? Has the witness actively posted on social media regarding the case? Who in the witness’s circle is feeding them misinformation about the case?

Answering these questions takes both resources—constantly monitoring a witness’s public social media—and the emotional intelligence to uncover their preconceptions when meeting with them. Ignore any of this and opposing counsel will exploit witness bias on cross-examination.

Jury Selection

Today’s jury pool doesn’t arrive neutral. In high-profile cases, jurors may already have consumed YouTube breakdowns of the evidence, podcasts theorizing about guilt or liability, and influencer commentary—some of it wildly inaccurate. This reality demands that trial counsel approach jury selection as both a legal exercise and a communications strategy.

Trial counsel should push hard for a process that addresses pretrial publicity with every individual juror. This starts with a comprehensive jury questionnaire. The questionnaire should cover potential jurors’ sources of news and their exposure to information about the case, among other topics.

Skilled trial lawyers can also carefully seek to preview case themes by, including questions that call for potential jurors to share their views on such topics as corporate responsibility or regulatory oversight, the reliability of digital forensic evidence, or media bias in criminal coverage.

Questionnaires should go out well before trial—the more time the trial team has to analyze responses, the better. Given the ubiquity of social media, failing to research jurors’ public social media profiles—which courts typically allow—might border on malpractice. Because each online search will be only a snapshot of a potential juror’s profile, constant monitoring throughout jury selection and trial is essential.

The ideal setup involves parallel teams: Trial lawyers conducting voir dire in the courtroom and a research team outside filtering real-time social media intelligence and feeding questions to counsel as jurors are called. This takes immense resources, and the logistics and costs should be built into the trial budget from day one.

Trial attorneys who treat voir dire as a purely legal exercise—rather than a communications and intelligence operation—will be outmaneuvered.

Using the Spotlight

When voir dire begins, the courtroom doors will not shut out all the influences of outside publicity. In fact, tactfully embracing public sentiment about the case can build rapport and credibility with the jury. In questioning potential jurors about their ability to impartially assess the evidence, defense lawyers can and should admit concerns about the media’s coverage of their client.

Plaintiff’s counsel similarly can address the public narrative about their client’s motivations. On either side, it is often possible to directly confront misinformation when questioning jurors about what they expect to see at trial.

Key Takeaways

Trial attorneys can no longer treat the public narrative about a case as someone else’s problem. The media, the influencers, and self-appointed legal commentators flooding social media not only shape the “court of public opinion.” They are, in effect, in the courtroom.

The lawyers who win high-profile cases will be those who build a strategy for both courtrooms: the one in front of the judge, and the one unfolding on every screen.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax, and Bloomberg Government, or its owners.

Author Information

Josh Hurwit is a partner at Holland & Hart who represents companies and executives in government investigations, regulatory enforcement actions, and complex commercial litigation. He’s a former US Attorney for the District of Idaho.

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