In 2023 or 2024 I was selected for jury service in a High Court case in Scotland. I was very nervous about attending so I thought I’d write a bit about my experience for anyone who finds themselves in the same situation.

By law I cannot talk about any specifics of what happened in the jury room. By choice, I’m going to be vague about the case itself, although I will say that it lasted for more than 10 days so I got a good feel for what it’s like to serve as a juror.

Being summoned

You receive a letter about 6 weeks before your service which you must respond to within 7 days. You can ask to be excused under certain circumstances - otherwise you are given a phone number which you need to call the evening before your service is due to begin.

On that call you will hear an automated message telling you what to do next - you may be released from service at this point, or you may be told to attend as summoned the next day. In my case, the message told me not to attend but to expect a phone call the next day, and if I didn’t get called then I needed to call the automated message line again the next evening. That happened twice, so I spent much of those two days nervously awaiting a phone call.

The call eventually happened on the morning of the 3rd day and I was asked to attend the court the following day, and also asked about any dietary preferences or restrictions regarding the provided lunches.

The first day

There isn’t really a dress code for being a juror - any normal day-to-day clothing seems to be fair game. You may be sitting in one spot for hours at a time so try and make yourself comfortable. That said, bear in mind the weight of the occasion, and that your actions during your service will significantly affect peoples’ lives, one way or the other. Probably best to avoid that t-shirt with the snarky slogan, is what I’m saying(!). I would also suggest wearing layers so you can adjust to the heat - I found the jury box very warm but others, sitting nearer an air vent, were freezing.

Anyway, I arrived to find about 30 other people who were in the same boat as me. I have heard that other courts can summon 100+ people at a time for multiple cases, but in my case there was just one trial starting that day so they needed 15 jurors and about as many ‘back-up’ jurors.

We were led into a nondescript room where we waited for a short while. We met the clerk and the macer who, among other things, are responsible for handling the jury. They told us roughly what the procedure would be for the rest of the day before taking us all through to the public gallery of the courtroom.

The accused was taken into the dock, the judge entered the room - things were starting to get real. The judge then introduced themselves, told us again about the procedure for the rest of the day, and finally introduced the case. We were told the name of the accused, the names of the ‘complainers’ (a somewhat belittling term, but at this stage that is the official name for them), and a listing of the charges being brought.

At this point the court was adjourned and the judge and the accused left the room. The clerk came to us to ensure that none of us personally knew any of the people involved in the case, in which case we would be dismissed, and to ask if anyone wanted to be excused due to the nature of the case. Several people asked to be excused and were taken individually to speak to the clerk in private about their reasons, and they were all allowed to leave immediately.

From the people that were left, 15 jurors were chosen (apparently at random) and the rest were dismissed from service and allowed to leave. I believe that these people can be asked to attend again during the following weeks and may be asked to serve on a different case, but in our case they were released entirely.

Now that the jury had been finalised, we were taken into the jury room which would become our home for the duration of the trial. We were introduced to the coffee machine, kettle, etc, and then provided with lunch.

After lunch we were brought back to the courtroom - now in our assigned seats in the jury box - and sworn in by the judge. We were introduced to the prosecutor and the defence lawyer, who would each lead the questioning of witnesses.

We were given individual clipboards and folders to keep notes during the trial. Any notes you take are kept entirely private - they stay in the courtroom (until the deliberation stage when you can take them to the jury room for reference), they get locked away overnight, and are destroyed at the end of the trial.

The rest of the day was spent introducing the charges in more detail, admin, and generally going over the procedure of how the trial would work in the days to follow.

Hearings

The trial proper started the next day. ‘Complainers’ and witnesses were brought in, or appeared by video link, and gave their accounts of various events in response to questions from the lawyers.

If you find yourself at this stage, do your best to take notes on everything that is said. Timestamp your notes and keep track of who is speaking at any given time. Keep track of names and descriptions of people mentioned, as well as their connections to others. Any of this may come up again later, and you don’t know what innocuous detail might turn out to be important.

You will hear the overall story in pieces, out of order, and potentially from multiple perspectives split across multiple days, so keeping your notes as organised as possible is really important. The fact that your notes stay in the courtroom the whole time can make this difficult, as you won’t get a chance to organise them on breaks or in your own time, but do your best.

Testimony can be hard to stomach. You may hear or see terrible things. Keep your head, keep taking notes. I also found it valuable to regularly keep an eye on the accused to see how they might respond to certain details or their overall vibe during certain topics.

All that said, don’t worry too much if you feel like you missed something in your notes - when it comes time to start deliberations, between the 15 jurors you should be able to compile a more or less complete series of events and perspectives. Just do your best.

The duration of hearings will vary from case to case - some will be done in a day or two, some like mine may take weeks. There may be scheduling, procedural, medical, or other issues which may result in a lot of waiting, or you might even get sent home early on some days. You may be sitting for 1-2 hours at a time, or you may bounce back and forth between the courtroom and the jury room as procedural issues get ironed out.

You will spend quite a lot of time with your fellow jurors. It’s a weird situation but you’re all in it together, and they are the only people you are allowed to talk to about the case during the trial (and even then, only when you are in the jury room). Try to remember everyone’s names (getting everyone to put their name in front of them at the table can help) and get comfortable being around them. When deliberation comes around you may need to have some uncomfortable conversations together so do your best to acquaint yourself with everyone beforehand.

After all of the witnesses have been called and dismissed, the lawyers for each side will make a speech summarising the important points of their case. In a long trial these may be very long speeches so try and make yourself comfortable.

Finally, the judge will address the jury and give you instruction on matters of law applicable to the case and general instructions for the deliberation stage. Again, take notes!

Deliberation

Finally it’s time to ruminate on all that you have seen and heard in the courtroom, discuss it with your fellow jurors, and make decisions on each charge. From now on you will spend almost all of your time in the jury room.

I would suggest first taking a little time to get your notes in order. I found a stapler immensely useful at this point!

The actual process of deliberation is left largely as an exercise for the jury to handle as they see fit, and as noted earlier, it’s illegal to talk about anything said or done in that room during deliberation. As such, I can’t really say anything more about that. You’ll figure something out amongst yourselves.

In the end though, you (as a group) need to have decided on a spokesperson and a verdict for each charge. Again, depending on the case, this could take hours or days to finalise. Once it’s done, you need to tell the clerk that you are ready and the court will be convened again.

Verdicts

Once back in the courtroom, the judge will ask the spokesperson to stand. The clerk will go through each charge one by one and ask the spokesperson for the jury’s verdict. I believe we were then adjourned one last time while they did the necessary paperwork.

We were brought back into the jury box for the last time. The judge then spoke directly to the accused, giving a summary of the verdicts and officially acquitting or convicting them for each charge. A date for sentencing was announced. A closing statement was made, the judge addressed the jury to thank us for our work and time spent, and finally we were dismissed!

The walk home was cathartic - I was drenched in heavy rain then treated to a pretty intense rainbow. 10/10 weather for the situation.

Afterwards

The case resulted in at least one conviction and sentencing was scheduled and rescheduled. I found it surprisingly difficult to follow the result of that. Court schedules can be searched here but it’s quite vague and only shows one month’s worth of records. Fortunately I found the courts service was happy to help when contacted by email.

I didn’t enjoy the experience - it was intense and stressful - but I’m glad I did it. It was interesting to see the judicial process working in real life. The court staff were friendly, attentive, and looked after us very well. I’m proud of how our jury approached our task and how we carried out our work. I came away feeling that I had done something genuinely important, and that’s a rare feeling for me.

I hope this gives you some idea of what to expect from your jury service but if you have any general questions you are welcome to contact me - again, I won’t talk about the specifics of the case but I’m happy to answer any questions you might have about the overall process/experience.