Somewhere in between. In many federal cases, there is little "picking" allowed. And where picking is allowed, it's mostly intuition. In large cases, jury con

Somewhere in between. In many federal cases, there is little "picking" allowed. And where picking is allowed, it's mostly intuition. In large cases, jury consultants have typically been hired to use their intuition, with a scientific-sounding gloss, so the lawyers and corporate managers have someone to blame if something goes wrong. They were famous for proposing questions that were supposed to tip you off to something important, like "Does anyone here regularly fill out a crossword puzzle?" Given the tiny samples, it was difficult to have scientific questions, or to prove that the questions were bunk. (I am less jaded about trial consultants, who deal with argumentation, compared to the 'jury consultant' industry -- which famously gave us Dr. Phil). In today's mega-cases, the money is spent on rapid profiling of the potential jurors' actual opinions, using their public-facing social media. There's still lots of armchair psychology, but not as much based on bullcrap questions.