Jury Duty (Long and boring). . .

I understand and appreciate that lawyers put in long hours. But so much of it is useless and/or duplication. I just settled out of court with a sales rep who claimed we owed him money. The settlement is a 12 page document, simply incomprehnsible to a layman. I'm sure it took a long time to draw this up.


The most famous and important freedom of the press trial in colonial America, the John Peter Zenger trial, took 3 hours. Surely somewhere between that and what we have now, is a happy medium.

I am not biased about the case in question. If the man committed the crime, I would like to see him found guilty; if he did not, I would like to see him found innocent.


This is not true for the attorneys. The attorney representing the defendant wants to see him found innocent regardless of whether or not he is. And the prosecuting attorney wants to see him found guilty regardless of whether or not he is.


It is not a question of whether a person is, in general, biased. It is a question of letting peolple who have a vested interest in the outcome of a trial deciding who should be the judges.

A settlement agreement and release should normally be no more than 2 pages consisting of some 10 paragraphs....I am not quite sure what kind of unnecessary boiler plate yours has. Besides, drafting those types of documents is generally not time consuming as you work with precedents.


I simply cannot imagine a 3 hour trial except in small claims court. The world and the law have become a lot more complex since the days of the Zenger trial you speak of.

"The world and the law have become a lot more complex since the days of the Zenger trial you speak of."


No doubt true. But I still think there's a lot of wasted time, energy and, money. Perhaps this is an inevitable feature of life in the big city in the big country.


Thanks for all your carefully considered responses.

The prosecutor should not want to convict someone who didn't do it. I know many don't have that attitude, but a lot do. The prosecutor should be like a second judge in there. Sometimes it is only the prosecutor sticking up for the rights of the defendant. Don't laugh, I have seen it several times.

The trial day might be short, but the jury's time should be maximized. I think that if Andy had been in an efficient courtroom where stuff got done when the jury was there he wouldn't be complaining. From his description the court had no desire to streamline things or get work done. If the jury is there 5 hours and hears 4.5 hours of testimony, that is fine. if they're there all day and nothing happens, that is no good. I'd hate to try a case to an angry, frustrated jury.


And I know the jurors don't care how late you work preparing. :-)

Point taken. But he is called the prosecutor. He's prosecuting the accused for the crime. I still don't see how he, or the defendant's attorney, as partisans on the issue of guilt or innocence, can be deciders of who the judgers of the accused will be.


My father is an attorney and I have a nephew who just passed the bar. So, contrary to what one might think about my sometimes facetoius anti-lawyer comments, there are good people who are also lawyers (you and skp, for example). It's only the Richard Nixons and Bill Clintons who give lawyers a bad name. [img]/images/wink.gif[/img]