Dr. Mark R. Phillips has consulted on over 1,000 cases and selected more than 300 juries during his 25-year career in trial and jury consulting. In addition to being a Senior Consultant at Trial Behavior Consulting, he serves as the firm’s Managing Director and heads its El Segundo, California office.
Mark has extensive experience in all facets of jury selection, witness preparation, and jury research. He has consulted on a very broad range of case types around the country, including hundreds of “bet-your-company” civil cases, such as the retrial of Oracle v. Google and the two federal jury trials that were part of the long-running litigation between Qualcomm and Apple. He often consults for defendants in wrongful death and personal injury cases and frequently helps defend law enforcement professionals in use-of-force cases. Mark has consulted on several wrongful conviction cases for plaintiffs and many high-profile criminal matters, including the People of the State of California v. Robert Durst and the so-called “The Irvine 11 case” – both for the Prosecution.
Mark has expertise in applied statistics, experimental design, survey development, and statistical modeling. He is the author of several published articles, including in peer-reviewed scientific journals, as well as numerous conference presentations on jury decision making, expert testimony, scientific evidence, eyewitness memory, and investigative interviewing. Recently, his interests have included jurors’ perceptions of ethnic minority attorneys and female attorneys, as well as non-English-speaking witnesses. Mark also co-authored a chapter on persuasion and argument development that was published in the Handbook of Trial Consulting, which is a leading professional textbook on trial consulting.
Dr. Phillips received his Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a Master of Science and Doctorate in Legal Psychology, with an emphasis in Cognitive and Experimental Psychology, from Florida International University in Miami. Dr. Phillips was awarded First Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in psychology and law by the American Psychology-Law Society. He is a member of the American Psychology-Law Society and the American Society of Trial Consultants.