Yeah, jury duty!

It happens to the best of us, and even to me:  I was called for jury duty last week and I had already used my get-out-of-jury-duty-for-free passes. So, off I went to the New York County Courthouse to wait out my two days of not being called to a case (I’ve done this before). But it turns out I was actually selected! While almost everyone there complained, it was actually a fascinating experience, and, among other things, it reinforced for me why the LSAT is so predictive of one’s performance in law school: it actually tests many of the skills that lawyers use (though, it became clear, not all of them).

It all began with Voir Dire – and if you’re a true LSAT geek, you are thinking of that one RC passage about Voir Dire and exposure to the media. Voir Dire is a fancy way of saying jury selection. The lawyers asked us questions and flicked us off the jury depending on our answers, biases, etc. We were quickly informed that this would be a personal injury case. That immediately made me think of those commercials – like Saul in Breaking Bad. Or this commercial. We were asked whether we worked for the subway — ah, someone got hit by a subway?! – and whether we knew some guy. And have we been in a personal injury case before? Oh, your mother was? What part of her body was injured? Oh, her nose…

It started to become apparent – some guy broke his nose on the subway. Ouch. Read more