Last summer, I served on a jury for the first time. Irritated that my work week was going to be so comprehensively disrupted, I arrived at the courthouse grumpy and looking for a way to be excused. Hundreds of like-minded folks were in the jury pool—stressed, overworked people who were having to juggle meetings, deadlines, travel plans, surgical schedules, childcare, elderly parent-care, and all manner of responsibilities to do their civic duty. No one was particularly happy to be there.
But a funny thing happened to me that week. I kind of got into it. I saw lots of people I knew in the holding pen (er, jury room), and when I was finally chosen for a jury, it turned out to be a quick and simple case, two hours gavel-to-gavel, in fact. I loved seeing how the process worked.
Now, granted that was my first time to serve, and I imagine that after a few more stints at the courthouse, I’ll be back to my original, grumpy self, but I was impressed. I was impressed by the court system, however dysfunctional it may be. I was impressed by the lawyers at the trial (well, the defense attorney anyway), the judge and the clerks. I was reminded of my undergraduate- and graduate- school days, when many of my fellow English majors went on to law school and I saw them adapt their fine writing skills from the analytical literary paper to the analytical first-year brief. During jury duty I thought, briefly, that maybe I should have gone to law school, too. It all seemed like a world I could fit into pretty well.
I have a few lawyers in my book club, a lawyer in the family, lawyers in my Sunday School class, lawyers who write for this magazine, lawyers in my sprawling network of friends. I like them all fine. They make simple tasks like voting on which movie to see a bit complicated, and they talk a lot at parties, but the ones I know are without exception intelligent, thoughtful, well-read, articulate, interesting people. In this issue of Birmingham magazine we celebrate the Top Attorneys in town, chosen via a peer review survey. In the section that begins on page 95 we honor the work that they do, particularly their community service work that often goes unrecognized. I am grateful that Birmingham has such a strong legal community, even if many of us can’t resist the occasional lawyer joke and even if we do roll our eyes when we get a jury summons.
Our city is better for having such a large number of these smart folks living and working here.
