Jury Duty: 5 Tips to Prepare for Your Summons

It’s finally come: the dreaded jury summons. You don’t have time for jury duty, but now you have to make time, taking a few days off from work, school, or your family. Even though there may be other things you’d rather do with your time, you can make your time performing your civic duty a little less painful by preparing for it. Here are 5 tips to help you.

Rest Well the Night Before

Getting enough sleep before you report for jury duty is important. Depending on where you live, you could spend hours in a room, waiting to be called. If you aren’t well-rested, you could end up falling asleep and miss your number being called. Or you might not be able to focus on the instructions or the questions asked during voir dire (the process where the lawyers for both the prosecution and the defense weed out the jurors they don’t want). By getting enough sleep, your body and your mind will be ready to last all day, if needed.

Dress Appropriately

Make sure you follow the right dress code.  For most locations, that means wearing close-toed shoes and avoiding casual things like shorts and t-shirts. If you want to be sure you’re following the correct standard, shoot for business casual: black or khaki slacks (or a nice skirt), a button-down shirt or blouse, and a nice pair of shoes (or some low heels—nothing fancy or troublesome to walk in). By dressing appropriately, you show respect for the judicial system and you won’t stick out among all the rest of the jurors.

Bring Something to Occupy Your Time

Be sure to bring something to keep you busy while you’re waiting. Even if your number is called for the first case, your chances of being selected for the jury are slim, so you’ll end up back in the room. Statistics across the country show that at least 70% of people reporting for jury duty are never selected. Some states are closer to 80-85%.

It’s not unheard of for potential jurors to wait for 6-7 hours or even longer in a day. Even with a one to two hour lunch break, that’s still a lot of time to sit in a room. You’ll want something to do. You could rely on your smartphone or tablet, or you could bring a book, your laptop, or some other work—like schoolwork or work for your job. Just don’t bring anything that could double as a weapon (like knitting needles or crochet hooks) because security will likely confiscate them when you get there.

Arrive Early to Find Parking Nearby

Most courthouses have a parking lot for visitors, but the space is limited, so if you want to park in that lot, you’ll have to arrive early. Even then, it’s not a guarantee you’ll get a spot in the lot, so make sure you’re prepared to park elsewhere. You might have to pay for parking in a city lot. Or you might have to park further away so you’ll need a little extra time to walk back to the courthouse. Make sure you bring a little cash and give yourself some more time, in case either (or both) of these happen to you.

Have Low Excitement Expectations

Don’t expect the kind of excitement you see in courtroom drama TV shows like Law & Order. From Los Angeles to Edmonton, criminal law and trials tend to be boring, despite how they tend to be portrayed.  Even if you’re selected for a jury, few trials carry any kind of real excitement, and the ones that do are typically high profile trials that last for months (sometime upwards of eight months from start to finish) and require the jury be sequestered—so they probably aren’t the type of trial you’d want to be a juror for simply because of the time commitment and the exclusion from society.

By using these 5 tips, you’ll be prepared for your jury duty stint. If you pay close attention, you may even learn a thing or two about the judicial system, possibly from your fellow jurors, the judge, or maybe from lawyers from firms like The Defence Team. Maybe you’ll even come out of it thinking those couple of days weren’t quite as painful or time-consuming as you’d thought they would be.