How often can you accurately predict the number of jurors who will report when scheduled? How often do you have too many jurors? Or too few jurors? How many extra jurors do you schedule (and pay) just to be sure you will have enough on a specific day? You can schedule jurors more efficiently by using an Outbound Reminder Call, Inbound Reporting Instruction and an AJIS report to predict the number of jurors who will actually report as instructed.

This process begins about a week prior to a juror’s anticipated reporting date. First, assign selected jurors an Inbound Reporting Instruction that gives them their scheduled appearance date, but tells them to call back the evening before to verify their instructions. This is a common AJIS message that most of you already use and is typically something like:

Second, create an Outbound Reminder Call message that notifies jurors that they are scheduled for jury service sometime within a given period, like “the week of…”, but does not give them a specific date. Instead, it tells them to call back to find out their scheduled appearance date. This message is sent out to the same group of selected jurors about 10 days before they are scheduled to appear.

Third, after the jurors were supposed to have called (Monday morning for this example), run an AJIS Call History Report with Callers Only selected, the date range adjusted as needed and the message filter set to only view jurors assigned 03 - Scheduled (Call Again). AJIS captures and records all juror call data, thus this report will display those jurors who were assigned Message 03 and who called back as instructed. Use this list to schedule jurors to report for jury service when they call back again. (Assign them your “Scheduled To Appear” or “Scheduled - Following Day” message.)

Since these people called as instructed, they are also much more likely to appear as instructed. You should find that you need only schedule 2 or 3 extra jurors to report – saving time for everyone while keeping jury expenses to a minimum!

The following calendar will help illustrate the timing of the steps in this AJIS TIP. The exact timing and message wording you may want to use will vary depending on your court’s jury service terms, office procedures, etc.

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
				Assign   Inbound Msg # 03 - Scheduled (Call Again)	Create & send Outbound Msg # 10 - Scheduled (Week of…)	Jurors call & receive Inbound Msg # 03 - Scheduled (Call Again)
More jurors call   & receive Inbound Msg # 03 - Scheduled (Call Again)	Run Call History Report & select jurors to appear next Monday.	Run Call History Report & select jurors to appear next Monday.	Run Call History Report & select jurors to appear next Monday.	Run Call History Report & select jurors to appear next Monday.	Assign Inbound Msg # 04 - Scheduled To Appear (next Monday)
Jurors call & receive Inbound Msg # 04 - Scheduled To Appear (tomorrow)	Jurors scheduled to appear  (and do!)

Remember, as long as your court has purchased AJIS Support, you can make any message changes needed to help your jury office and jury selection run more efficiently. If you would like to add or change any Inbound, Outbound or Information messages in your Call Flow, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

(Note: This TIP is very similar to using the Expected Calls Report and activating the Jurors are expected to return this call: feature in an Outbound Reminder Call. This feature is explained in detail in Section 5.4, Creating Reminder Calls (Step One) in the AJIS Desktop 3.6 Users Guide.)

This AJIS TIP was developed by Betsy Tait, in the District of Arizona. If you have other helpful information or creative uses for AJIS, please let us know so we can create more AJIS TIPs to benefit all of our AJIS customers. Likewise, if you have any suggestions that you think might help improve AJIS, please also let us know. You never know, your suggestion may end up as a feature enhancement in an AJIS Upgrade!