Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury ...

(from lawcomix.com)

After work, drove into LA to participate in Wonder Woman's mock jury selection exercise for the class she's teaching. This was the first week of the class that WW is co-teaching with a fellow attorney, and she had a bunch of us come to act as jurors so that her students could try their hand at jury selection questions, nd learn subtle techniques of how to use and influence the jury pool. Party Girl, Lovely Lady, T Diddy, myself, and two other attorneys from the office showed up for the fun.

It was interesting to see the students struggle through, try to grasp the concept of how to relate to the jury, encourage trust, weed out who would be good/bad jurors for their part of the "case," and influence how the jurors perceived certain bits of information based on presentation and questioning. Some were pretty good, like the two young-professional looking women down in the front. Others looked a little lost, like the young guy in the middle back. And then there was the Adam Goldberg-esque looking kid on the far side who latched on to my last name, and kept addressing questions to me as, "MS. X, do you think, given your professional background, you could be impartial ..." after which all the students addressed me as Ms. X, eventhough all the other jurors were able to keep annonymous with the ubiquitous titles of Juror #1 (2, 3, 4, etc). T Diddy seemed to think that AG#2 was really sharp and would be the best student in the class, and eventually work as a public defender. I thought AG#2 looked like a rebel, and more likely to work in entertainment, where the pay was high, and the clients more tolerable of maverick tendencies.

Also very interesting to see WW in her element, expounding on her specialty, to (and with) those who are also in the field. It's fascinating to see my friends in action at work.