Dr. Mark R. Phillips, Ph.D.
DR. MARK R. PHILLIPS has consulted on more than 850 cases and selected over 200 juries during the past 23 years. In addition to being the executive vice president of Trial Partners, he serves as the firm’s managing partner for research. Mark has extensive experience in all facets of jury selection and witness preparation, and he has expertise in conducting qualitative and quantitative jury research, including a wide variety of mock trials, focus groups, community attitude surveys, juror profiling studies, expert witness studies, damages evaluations, post-trial juror interviews, venue analyses, and shadow juries. He has consulted on a broad range of case types around the country, including antitrust, class action/mass torts, conspiracy, contracts, employment, fraud, all types of intellectual property, medical malpractice, personal injury, product liability, toxic tort, wrongful death, and murder.
Mark has worked on hundreds of “bet-your-company” civil cases, including the retrial of Oracle v. Google and the two federal jury trials in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California that were part of the long-running litigation between Qualcomm and Apple. He often consults for defendants in wrongful death and personal injury cases involving toxic tort, products liability, and premises liability claims, in addition to frequently helping to defend law enforcement officers in use-of-force cases. Mark also has consulted on several wrongful conviction cases and many criminal matters, including People v. Ramos and Cicinelli (also known as the “Kelly Thomas case”) and the so-called “The Irvine 11 case” – both for the Prosecution.
Prior to working as a trial consultant, Mark was a Court Research Associate at the National Center for State Courts, Center for Jury Studies in Williamsburg, Virginia. In that capacity, he conducted empirical research on jury decision making, complex civil litigation, jury reform, court management, public policy and the law, and other areas related to the legal system. He also has expertise in applied statistics, attitude measurement, persuasion, experimental design, scale construction, survey/questionnaire development, statistical modeling, and program evaluation.
Mark is the author of several published articles, including articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, as well as numerous conference presentations on jury decision making, expert testimony, scientific evidence, eyewitness memory, investigative interviewing, and other topics related to psychology and law. 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). He then earned a Master of Science and a Doctorate in Legal Psychology, with an emphasis in Cognitive and Experimental Psychology, from Florida International University in Miami. Mark was awarded First Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in psychology and law by the American Psychology-Law Society. The topic of his dissertation was juror decision making in a complex case involving scientific evidence and expert testimony. Mark is a member of the American Psychology-Law Society and the American Society of Trial Consultants.