Since 1983, the Jury Verdict Reporter of Colorado has been helping the state’s attorneys navigate civil law.

The organization works nearly every week, outside of a few weeks in July and December, to publish a summary of civil jury verdicts from federal and district courts from every county in Colorado. Those summaries include information like who the attorneys were on both sides, a summary of what happened and who the expert witnesses were.

The newsletter was started by Sally Gilbert who got the idea after seeing something similar elsewhere. Gilbert had a background working for trade magazines. She sent out a sample copy to around 6,000 attorneys and got a strong response. It was officially launched in October 1983.

About 10 years ago, her husband Steve Gilbert was brought on to serve as the director of research where he works to deliver customized research from the company’s database when attorneys request it. He has a background in sales and marketing. The Gilberts are the only two staff members.

A lot of work goes into building the newsletter and database including interviewing the attorneys of record and using court records to flesh out what happened. Jury Verdict Reporter of Colorado has paid subscribers including civil litigators, vendors and insurance companies who get the newsletter in the mail but the couple hopes to move toward going more digital.

“[Subscribers] use the publication to see what kind of cases are being tried with what results and then they also use the publication to help them prepare for trial if they have a similar type of case or similar jurisdiction,” said Sally Gilbert. “Sometimes people use it as a tool to educate their clients. Sometimes plaintiffs have [an] inflated idea of what their case might be worth.”

Steve Gilbert provided an example of the customized research they do. An attorney might call who is working on a car accident case where someone has a certain type of injury and wants to see awards that occurred in similar cases. Based on that, he would research the topic through their database of cases. The attorneys can also order expert witness reports or even look at cases opposing counsel has tried before. Jury Verdict Reporter of Colorado has about 10,000 verdicts in its database.

Whenever a non-legal professional looks at court documents, they may find a lot of jargon they don’t understand. But hard work and strong connections help Jury Verdict Reporter of Colorado break through that barrier.

“We have been extremely fortunate in that the attorneys have always been really supportive of the newsletter recognizing the value that it provides to them and so they’ve really been supportive in terms of sources … and that they can really be concise and detailed about their case in a pretty short amount of time,” Sally Gilbert said.

Sally Gilbert added over the last 40 years, technology has made it easier to get ahold of the attorneys through email and it’s also easier to get information from the courts.

The Gilberts were already prepared for the pandemic as they work from home, but had concerns over a lack of cases due to courthouse shutdowns. They were able to push through, however, reporting on the cases that were happening, along with what the courts were doing to get through the pandemic.

Steve Gilbert also said they were concerned research would come to a halt during the pandemic.

“But what we found is there were more settlements that were going on, so they needed the verdict research even more during the pandemic,” he said. “That worked out great for us.”