It's true that jurors come to court with unrealistic expectations about lawyers and the law, whether from watching too much "CSI" or from having paid insufficient attention on the day in high school civics when someone explained why we have both federal and state courts.
It's just as true, though, that lawyers come to court with unrealistic expectations about jurors. And our mistakes are hard to correct, because we so rarely get to watch jurors at work. Whenever a lawyer serves on a jury and comes out surprised, it's a lesson to us all; if it's a law professor, all the better.
Last week, law professor Gordon Smith got a jury duty notice, and he wrote about it in the Conglomerate business law blog:
I know law professors who have served on juries. Still, I wonder whether I would want one of us on the jury if I were a litigant. Perhaps the decision requires too much context, but as a general matter, wouldn't law professors tend to exert a disproportionate influence over the other jurors?
"These things stood out:"
They would exert a disproportionate influence, is the simple answer to that question, but a couple of Smith's commenters give more nuanced answers from their own experience. One of them, commenting under the name AnonLawProf, tells a jury duty story that's interesting on several levels, beginning by confirming a law professor's ability to lead a jury and continuing with a great list of surprises:
I was (somehow) allowed on a criminal jury not too long ago. It proved utterly fascinating. I was, yes, made foreperson, and I indeed ran it like a seminar (no wonder it took two days to reach a verdict -- in a drunk driving case!). These things stood out: (1) how badly the state court system is run, and how poorly the judge protected jurors' time: a five hour trial took four days, plus two for voir dire; (2) the utter uselessness of the jury instructions; (3) the bizarre logical leaps a few of the jurors tried to make (e.g., "The legislature enacted this drunk driving statute so we could party without having to worry about it."); (4) how deeply formalistic and legalistic most of the jurors were.
Those four things would come as a surprise to a lot of trial lawyers, and they're all true.
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Thanks to Trial Ad Notes for picking this up, and private note to AnonLawProf: when you tell us a drunk driving voir dire took two days, we're going to guess you live in Connecticut, the land of constitutionally guaranteed one-on-one voir dire in every case. Am I right?
(Photo by Douglas Muth at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmuth/490613967/; license details there.)
