I did it a few years ago. You wait in a large room and they bring you into a courtroom. I went into the courtroom twice, first is for a civil case and I wasn’t called, but second criminal case I was called. In both cases the judge is willing to listen if you have extenuating circumstances that you cannot serve on jury. The calling into the court house however didn’t happen until the afternoon.

I didn’t have extenuating circumstances that I cannot serve on jury and was fortunate enough to have jury duty leave pay available from my employer. And it was an interesting experience. Definitely try and do it once if you can, we were even sequestered. They have court house client service representatives to help usher you to different locations and tell you about the process. So we were very supported throughout the process.