songbird's crazy world

My daughter Jen had no idea I used to be a courtroom attorney.  as far as she's concerned, mom works for an insurance company and always has.  she's wrong.  I was with a law firm before she was born, went to work for an insurance company when she was an infant.  and when she was 7 I went back to a law firm, spent 3 years there before coming back to an insurance company. on the other hand, Jen knows that my sister is an excellent trial attorney -- until recently she was an assistant district attorney in NYC. Jen and I are about to be sued over the auto accident she had last may.  I won't share the details, obviously, since this matter is going into litigation.  but I was stressing over it a bit. so my darling daughter told me I should talk to her aunt to get myself calm, since Aunt knows all about these things!

Now, you all know that I am a lawyer. I graduated from law school in 1984. spent 10 years of my life working at various litigation-based law firms, but found my niche working in-house at an insurance company. A number of years ago I was called for jury duty. No, lawyers are no longer exempt from service. Here in New York, you are very likely to serve jury duty without ever setting foot inside the courthouse. when you get your jury-duty summons, there are instructions on how to call in to see if you have to report to court. You generally serve on telephone standby for 2 weeks, and if you're not called to court during that time, you can consider your duty done. I was summoned to court on the very last day of my telephone standby. When I got to court I was made a part of a 25-member pool. The lawyers were to pick 6 jurors and two alternates from the pool for a civil trial. I knew they would never choose me. If I'd known one of the lawyers I would have been dismissed righ...