It's hard to game jury selection as potential juror. As a former public defender, I would suggest looking clean and tidy and not stereotypically anything. I wish I'd get called and selected, but it hasn't happened.

You can't play into a trial attorney's strategy because the questioning may not be that detailed. In my experience, voire dire consists of group questions (do you know any of the attorneys, do you know any of the parties involved, have you formed an opinion of this case) and then 10-12 individual questions like "what do you do for a living" "have you (or any member of your family) ever been involved in a lawsuit/been the victim of a crime" "are you related to any police officers" "do you believe that officers are more trustworthy as witnesses"

Also, you have no way of knowing what that strategy will be. You may (most likely) will have no opportunity to present yourself as anything at, much less a chance to present yourself as something desirable. In any event, presenting yourself as capable and intently interested may keep you out of the pool, if the case hinges on something esoteric and technical and the attorney wants jurors who will tune out or be confused by that testimony.

At any rate, each side is looking for different answers, and there's not a lot you can say in response to these questions that works for both sides or makes you seem like a good juror. In my opinion, jury selection as it is practiced yields as good a jury as you'd get taking a random twelve people out of line at the Chipotle.

During my last jury duty, the presiding judge told us that if you stay as quiet and unassuming as possible and don't volunteer any information about yourself during the question period, you'll stand a good chance of being picked, almost by default.

* Don't look too eager to be on a jury.

* Try to present yourself as someone who's smart enough to understand the attorneys' arguments but not the type who would actually use that intelligence to poke holes in those arguments.

I just spent the last two days in the jury selection process, though I was an extra and just got to watch instead of answer questions. The people who remained were, for the most part, the people who didn't seem to have any sort of conflict with the case, answered the questions, and understood and accepted what was asked of them as jurors without any fuss. Other than that, it's up to the attorneys and random chance.

Okay--I'm going to wear clean, tidy biz-caz clothes (which, not coincidentally, cover the tattoos--some of the other people I've asked about this were very firm on that point), and try to mostly keep my mouth shut.

I'm getting the impression that there really isn't a whole lot I can do to positively influence my chances of selection (negatively, though, that's another story). But looking decent, keeping my mouth shut, not appearing too eager--that seems like good advice. Am I missing anything?

When I got called up for jury duty in WA state I really couldn't afford to serve on one (had an hourly wage job at the time). So after going the first day I worked out a strategy to not get called to serve on the jury: be at the end of the line. They more or less go down the line asking each potential juror various questions to disqualify them. Additionally the lawyers get a certain amount of "freebies", that is they can just disqualify a person for no stated reason. The upshot is, barring some controversial case, if you are in the back the odds are they'll have selected the members and alternates before they get to you. So to increase your chances of getting on the jury I'd do the opposite. Plus of course all of the advice given above.