| Comment | You shouldn't ignore it, you can be fined if you do.
In terms of excuses, if you have certain criminal convictions/certain jobs you're not allowed to serve on a jury, and there's a few other reasons where you can automatically get excused if you want (e.g you've done jury service recently or health conditions would make it difficult). Apart from that you can ask for other reasons (e.g you have a holiday booked, it's an especially busy time at work, you're a student and it would disrupt the semester), and usually they're sympathetic, but this isn't guaranteed, and you might only get it delayed rather than cancelled.
Bit of advice - if possible it's worth doing, especially right now it's a pretty easy system (iirc all you do is you phone in each night to see if you're required to come in the next day, and you keep doing that until you get picked or until your jury duty's done. Plus a lot of trials are still taking place in the cinemas/remote jury centres rather than the courts), and once you've done it once you won't have to do it again for another few years, even if you don't get picked. |
|---|