Tuesday, November 14, 2017

How To Make Money Online: Become a Paid Juror

In my pursuit of finding weird ways to make money, I found out about a site called Sign Up Direct where you can volunteer to be a mock juror. This is a bit of a stretch to call it making money online as you do have to do this one in person, but they do find opportunities in your area. Instead of the normal $15 for an entire day's work that jury duty gives you, this gets you $120 for a little over five hours of your time. Now you're not going to set the world on fire with the payday, but it's super easy money.

I signed up and was actually scheduled to be a mock juror within a week. I went to the office on a weekday night and at registration, I quickly realized that I was by far the sexiest juror out of the 21 selected people. Before we got started, we had to answer survey questions for an hour which was super boring as you had to wait for them to record the entire group's answer before moving on to the next question. It was definitely the most tedious part of the evening.

This brought us to our first of two breaks during the evening. The most disappointing part of the night were that the snacks were terrible. A tray of small store-bought cookies. They had sodas but no bottled water, what a joke. Since I'm a meathead, I brought a protein bar, and people were hella jealous of me.

After that, it was basically just a speedy trial. The reason they do this is to try to come to a settlement without actually going to court. If one side hears that a jury is not as favorable to their side as they expected, they may be willing to alter their negotiation in order to get a deal done to either save money or ensure they get something, rather than nothing. They have the lawyers on each side there but instead of using witnesses, they just use video clips of depositions to try to prove their points.

The plaintiff's side starts, and although I am not allowed to talk about the specifics, I can tell you what I thought of the people presenting. Unimpressed is the best word to describe it. As someone who has seen nearly every episode of Suits, I know good lawyering when I see it, and this, my friends, were two lawyers that would have been absolutely shredded by Harvey Specter. Hell, they may have had trouble with Harold. On the plaintiff's side, they had an older gentleman who had the charisma of a mosquito. He presented some facts, presented some testimony and told us that we should do what's right. Although he wasn't entertaining with it, he had enough information that I was definitely on his side when he had finished, and the defendant was going to have a lot of work to do for me to change that opinion.

The defendant did not deliver. He brought the charisma, but unfortunately, the words that came out of his mouth showed no compassion, and it made him unlikable. He didn't talk for as long as the plaintiff's side, and that was good, because he really didn't do himself any favors when he opened his mouth. It was disappointing, as I was hoping to be wowed by some good lawyering, but these two were total amateurs.

We wrapped up with a quick rebuttal from the plaintiff's side, but even he knew he didn't have much work to do at that point. After that, we split into three groups and came up with our own individual decisions. Finally, after we have filled out that form and given our justification, we talk about it as a group to come together as a group decision. luckily, we all agreed that the plaintiff should win, so then I took charge and just had us average what we thought the settlement should be to come up with our final number, because it was past 11:00 PM, and I just wanted to get out of there at that point.

The highlight of the night was the end where they give you an envelope with your pay - straight cash, homey. Overall, it's easy, boring work, but I have $120 and compared to some of the previous installments of making money online, this one has definitely been the most lucrative. The only issue is that outside of signing up, it's not done online, which does definitely give it an advantage.

Long story short: I'm rich, bitch.

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