ZAPJURY ANNOUNCES MOCK JURIES ONLINE FOR LAWYERS NATIONWIDE

ZapJury, Inc., an Internet startup company in Naples, Florida, which will provide mock juries to evaluate cases for lawyers online, announced it would commence operations on Wednesday, September 11, 2002. The founder of the company, Douglas Wilson, himself a lawyer, said he picked that day for several reasons. First, we are ready to go. Second, I wanted the company to make a positive statement about America and our confidence in the future on that day. And third, its my birthday."

Naples, FL -- September 11, 2002 --
   Lawyers wanting to evaluate their cases using a mock jury may now do so online, nationwide.
   ZapJury, Inc., an Internet startup company in Naples, Florida, which will provide mock juries to evaluate cases for lawyers online, announced it would commence operations on Wednesday, September 11, 2002.
   The founder of the company, Douglas Wilson, himself a lawyer, said he picked that day for several reasons. First, we are ready to go. Second, I wanted the company to make a positive statement about America and our confidence in the future on that day. And third, its my birthday."
   Mock juries are used to assist lawyers polish their cases for trial, but they are also very useful in making settlement decisions. We want this tool to be much more widely used, knowing it will help settle cases," Wilson said.
   ZapJury already has jurors in 19 states, who are available nationwide online. But lawyers prefer local jurors, so ZapJury wants to recruit over 100,000 jurors as soon as possible, so that there will be enough to participate in every
county in every state. In aid of that, ZapJury offers a multilevel compensation program as an incentive for jurors to recruit other jurors.
   ZapJury intends to supplement if not replace the traditional method of using mock juries, which relies on a limited number of persons who are paid for half a day or a full day, sometimes longer, to attend a presentation of a case by lawyers and to deliberate in the way a real jury would. By providing an online interface for these tasks, the time for
completing the evaluation and their costs can be greatly reduced, and the number of responding jurors greatly increased.
   The market for such a service is substantial. Approximately eight million civil and six million criminal cases are filed in state courts every year, litigated by approximately half of the one million practicing lawyers in the United States. ZapJury can provide mock juries for all these cases because it has developed proprietary software to manage a large number of lawyer-juror interfaces. It is seeking patents for its system.
   The basic cost of the system to the lawyer is $10 a month. For that he gets an online office", where he can prepare a fact summary, statements of law that apply to the case, argument on both sides, and questions for the jurors.
        The cases are published on the ZapJury website for the jury panel to examine. There is a $5 charge to the lawyer for
publishing the case.
   When a case is posted, the jurors can either evaluate the case, or not. If the lawyer sees that not enough jurors are responding, the system then permits a bidding process to take place. The lawyer can re-publish the case with a
dollar offer per juror and a deadline for acceptance of that offer.
        The jurors can then either accept the offer or make a counter-offer. The lawyer can accept any of the jurors he or she wants and continue the process of bidding until enough
jurors are contracted for who are suitable to the lawyer.
   If its a celebrity crime, for example, lots of people will do it for free. If its a property condemnation case, or a fender bender, expect to pay some juror fees," Wilson said.
   Enrolled jurors may look over all the materials in a case before deciding whether to accept it. That helps them estimate how long their response will take, and consequently how much money they will want before doing the
evaluation.
   Members of the public who are not enrolled may visit the website, www.zapjury.com, and read the brief case summaries but may not see all the materials until they sign up as jurors. That process requires that they agree to keep the
details confidential.
   All jurors who enroll in the system provide some basic demographic information, including race, income, type of job, political and religious persuasions, and age. The lawyers may ask more detailed questions, and in bidding for jurors may specify certain characteristics they are looking for.
   The typical case should take from 30 minutes to an hour to respond to, but that will vary depending on the complexity of the case, Wilson said.

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