Breaks are important. The research shows that even short breaks throughout the day can improve focus and productivity, and while we may not want jurors to be productive per se, we would certainly hope the they’re focused. However, breaks for jurors can be unpredictable. One court helpfully informs people that there will usually be a morning break, a lunch break, and an afternoon break. Another informs jurors that judges will attempt to take regularly scheduled breaks, and any juror may ask for an unscheduled break if the need arises because worrying about the next break distracts from the trial.
Judges and attorneys may not want to give the jury the freedom of long or frequent breaks. The trial cannot resume without all jurors present, and every break is another chance for one or more jurors to be distracted or get in trouble. But from a focus standpoint, maybe more breaks more frequently is the answer, especially if jurors use those breaks to let their brains consolidate what they just saw in the courtroom. The problem is how these breaks are structured.
Problems With Application
A popular technique for improving productivity and focus is the Pomodoro Technique, which alternates fixed-length periods of work with short fixed-length breaks. After repeating the work-then-break routine four times, you take a longer break. If you finish your task before the time runs out, you go over your work for the rest of the time. If something interrupts your work session, your pomodoro, you either put the interruption aside to work on later or restart your pomodoro with your interruption.
This technique is well-known and low-tech and so would be easy to explain to jurors and implement in the courtroom. But it has obvious flaws. Under the Pomodoro Technique, pomodoros are traditionally twenty-five minutes long. Trials that can be broken down into neat, twenty five-minute chunks are rare, if they exist at all. Of course, the length of the pomodoro can be changed, but one of the reasons why the Pomodoro Technique works is that it regularly provides the brain with rewards (breaks). Since regularity is the name of the game, the length of the pomodoro should be set at the beginning of the trial for the entire trial or at the beginning of each day of trial for the rest of the day. The court could theoretically start the trial, wait until a natural stopping point to call a break, and then use that to determine the length of the pomodoros for that trial or that day.
But trials do not come in perfectly equal slices. Some aspects of a trial may have time limits, like opening statements and closing arguments, but witnesses do not all take the same amount of time. If the timer goes off during direct examination or cross-examination, the questioning attorney would be forced to stop. If the following break is a longer one, the attorney may feel the need to go back over the questioning from before the timer went off, especially if the attorney was carefully building up to something.
There is also the problem of interruptions. Would an objection count as an interruption that requires resetting the timer? One would presume that anything that requires the jury to leave the courtroom would also require resetting the timer, but what about a sidebar with the jury still seated? And if the pomodoro overlaps with lunch, do you delay lunch or forgo the pomodoro entirely like some people do?
The Solution: An Original Technique
Breaks are important, but trials can be unpredictable and irregular. While the Pomodoro Technique is only one technique, it’s a good example of how pre-existing time management regimes for increasing productivity and focus may not fit with how trials work. If more breaks more frequently are going to integrated into trials, they may require a regime specifically designed with trials in mind. And on a more general note, more breaks means longer trials. Some jurors may prefer two days with few breaks to three days with frequent breaks.
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