What Does a Jury Summons Look Like?
and how to tell a real one from a convincing fake
A field guide for the document in your hand right now.

The envelope arrives and your stomach drops a little. Inside is a document with official-looking seals, legal language, and a date by which you must respond. The first question most people have isn't "how do I defer?" — it's "is this actually real?" Jury duty scams have been running since at least 2005, when the FBI issued its first national warning about phone-based impersonation schemes, and they've only grown more sophisticated since then. Meanwhile, real summonses sometimes look surprisingly low-budget, which makes the confusion worse in both directions.

This article tells you exactly what a genuine jury summons contains, how it's delivered, what the physical document looks like depending on whether it comes from a federal or state court, and — most usefully — the specific details that separate a legitimate notice from a forgery or a social-engineering attempt. The goal is that by the time you finish reading, you can look at the document in your hand and know with confidence what it is.

How a Real Jury Summons Is Delivered — and How It Isn't

Every legitimate jury summons in the United States arrives by mail. That's it. Not email. Not a phone call. Not a text message with a link. Not a process server showing up at your door. The U.S. Postal Service is the exclusive delivery mechanism because courts need a paper trail and because first-class mail to your last known address satisfies the legal requirement of notice.

Federal district courts typically mail summonses via first-class mail, sometimes with a return-receipt request if the court has reason to think the address is uncertain. Many state courts do the same, though a handful of high-volume urban courts — notably in Cook County, Illinois, and Los Angeles County, California — have experimented with certified mail for first summonses. The envelope is usually a standard government white or manila envelope with the court's return address printed on it, not handwritten.

The phone-call scam exploits the one thing most people don't know: courts almost never call jurors proactively. When a court does make outbound calls, it's typically an automated reminder system that already has your juror ID on file from a summons you previously received. A stranger calling to say you "missed" jury duty you never knew about, demanding your Social Security number to "verify" your identity before issuing a warrant, is running a fraud. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has logged thousands of these complaints annually since 2018.

The Physical Anatomy of a Federal Jury Summons

Federal jury summonses come from U.S. District Courts, and they follow a fairly standardized format because they're governed by the Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 (28 U.S.C. § 1861 et seq.). Here's what the document actually contains:

• Court identification: The full name of the court at the top — for example, "United States District Court for the Southern District of New York" or "United States District Court for the Northern District of California." The word "United States" will appear. There are 94 federal district courts, and the summons will name exactly one of them.
• The official court seal: Printed on the document, typically in the header. Federal court seals include an eagle, the name of the court, and the district. On high-quality summonses this may be a slightly embossed or colored seal; on plainer ones it's a black-and-white print. It will not look like a clipart eagle.
• Your name and address: Printed exactly as they appear in the source records — usually your state's voter registration rolls, DMV records, or both. If there's a typo in your name in those records, the summons will have that same typo.
• A juror qualification questionnaire: Federal summonses almost always include a multi-question form you must complete and return, asking about citizenship, English proficiency, age, felony convictions, and whether you have a disqualifying condition. This questionnaire is frequently stapled to or printed on the reverse of the summons itself.
• A juror identification number: A unique number assigned to your summons. You'll use this number if you call the court or check your status online. It typically appears in the upper right corner.
• Reporting instructions: The specific date (or a date range with instructions to call in), the courthouse address, what floor or room to report to, and what to bring (usually just a valid photo ID).
• Penalty language: A statement that failure to respond may result in a fine, imprisonment, or both, citing the relevant federal statute. Real summonses are direct about this because the law requires it.
• A clerk's signature or facsimile signature: The document is typically signed by the Clerk of Court, though on mass-produced summonses this is a printed facsimile rather than a wet ink signature.

One thing federal summonses notably do not contain: a demand for payment. You will never be asked to pay a fee to serve, to register online through a commercial site, or to call a 1-900 number.

What State Jury Summonses Look Like — and Why They Vary

State summonses are where the confusion multiplies, because there is no single national standard. Each of the 50 states runs its own jury management system, and within some states each county runs its own. The result is that a jury summons from the Superior Court of Maricopa County, Arizona looks meaningfully different from one issued by the 14th Judicial Circuit in Florida or the Supreme Court of New York (which, confusingly, is a trial court).

Despite that variation, genuine state summonses share a core set of features:

• The court's full official name: "Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles" or "Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois." Vague language like "Local Court Office" or "Jury Department" without a proper court name is a red flag.
• A state or county seal: Every court has one. They tend to include the state name, often the state motto, and frequently an image (a torch, scales, a state outline). The seal on a real summons will be consistent with other official documents from that state — you can verify this by Googling the state court's official website and comparing.
• A case or juror number: Assigned by the court's jury management system. In large counties this number may be quite long (Los Angeles uses a 9-digit system). California Penal Code § 209 is the relevant federal analog; state equivalents cite misdemeanor contempt of court, fines typically ranging from $100 to $1,500 depending on jurisdiction.

Some states — including Texas and Georgia — have moved to a two-step process where you receive a questionnaire first, and only receive a formal summons to appear after returning it. If you get a questionnaire asking about jury eligibility and it bears all the hallmarks above, it is a legitimate precursor to a summons, not the summons itself.

Paper quality is not a reliable indicator. Some county courts print on thin paper with faded ink because their budget is what it is. Don't mistake lo-fi printing for illegitimacy.

Specific Red Flags That Mark a Document or Contact as Fake

Most jury duty scams don't bother with a fake document at all — they rely on a phone call. But document-based forgeries do exist, and some are quite polished. Here are the specific tells that separate a fake from the real thing, in rough order from most to least reliable:

1. It demands money. No legitimate jury summons asks you to pay anything upfront. Not a deposit, not a processing fee, not a fine payable to avoid appearing. Fines for contempt of court are imposed by a judge after a hearing, not collected by return mail or wire transfer.
2. The URL or phone number doesn't match the court's official website. Look up the court independently — don't use the contact information on the suspicious document — and compare. Courts publish their contact details on.gov domains. If the summons directs you to juryservices-maricopa.com rather than superiorcourt.maricopa.gov, that's a forgery.
3. It arrived by email or text. Already covered, but worth repeating: courts do not summon jurors electronically for the first time. Some courts send reminders by text or email after you've already registered using a code from a mailed summons — but the initial contact is always physical mail.
4. It asks for your Social Security number, date of birth, or bank information in response. The juror qualification questionnaire asks about citizenship, English language ability, age range (not exact date of birth), and criminal history. It does not ask for your SSN or financial information.
5. The seal looks wrong. Compare the seal on the document to the official seal visible on the court's.gov website. Fake seals are often copied from a low-resolution source and look slightly pixelated or have incorrect text around the border. The name of the court in the seal should match the header of the document exactly.
6. The language is threatening in a non-specific way. Real summonses cite specific statutes for their penalty clauses. "You will be arrested" without citing a statute, or language that says a warrant "has already been issued" before you've had any prior contact with the court, is scripted to panic you into compliance.
7. The return address is a P.O. Box. Federal and state courts operate from physical courthouses. A P.O. Box as the only return address, with no street address for the courthouse, is wrong.

One scenario that trips people up: receiving a phone call from someone who knows your address and describes the summons you supposedly ignored. This information is not hard to obtain — voter rolls are public records in most states — and it makes the scam feel more credible. Knowing your address doesn't make the caller legitimate. Hang up and call the court directly using the number from their official website.

How to Verify a Jury Summons You're Not Sure About

If the document in your hand is passing most of the checks above but something still feels off, here's the verification process that actually works:

Step 1: Find the court's official contact information independently. Go to your state's official judiciary website (usually something like courts.ca.gov or courts.wa.gov) or, for federal courts, to uscourts.gov, find the specific court named on your summons, and get the phone number directly from there. Do not call the number printed on the suspicious document until you've confirmed it matches.

Step 2: Call the jury clerk's office. Tell them you received a summons and want to confirm it's in their system. Give them your name and the juror ID number on the document. Any legitimate summons will be in their database. If the clerk has no record of it, you're holding a forgery.

Step 3: Check the court's juror portal. Most courts with more than moderate volume now have online jury portals where you can enter your juror ID and last name to check your status. For example, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania uses eJuror, a system administered through the federal judiciary. Los Angeles Superior Court has its own portal at lacourt.org. If your number doesn't return a valid result on the official portal, the document is not legitimate.

Step 4: If you still can't determine authenticity, visit the courthouse in person. Bring the document. The jury clerk's office can look at it and tell you immediately whether it came from them. Courts are used to this question — they won't think you're being paranoid.

One thing to avoid: posting the full document on social media or Reddit asking strangers to verify it. Depending on what personal information is visible, that's a privacy risk, and strangers online are no more reliable than your own verification steps.

What Happens If You Ignore a Real Summons

This section exists because some people who receive a legitimate summons convince themselves it might be fake specifically because they don't want to serve. That reasoning is worth examining honestly.

Ignoring a legitimate federal jury summons is contempt of court under 28 U.S.C. § 1866(g). The penalty is a fine of up to $1,000, three days in jail, or both. In practice, what actually happens at most federal courts is that you receive a show-cause order — a letter asking why you didn't respond — before any penalty is imposed. But courts have become less forgiving about this since the COVID-era backlog of cases. The Southern District of New York, for example, has sent show-cause orders to no-shows consistently since 2022.

State penalties vary. In California, failure to appear after a summons is a misdemeanor under Code of Civil Procedure § 209, carrying a fine of up to $1,500. Texas sets the fine at $100 to $1,000 under Government Code § 62.0141. New York's fine is up to $250 for a first failure to appear. These are actual maximum figures from the statutes — courts frequently impose less, or nothing, for a first offense with a good explanation.

The right response to a real summons you can't or don't want to comply with is not to ignore it — it's to request a deferral or exemption through the official process. Every court has one. Federal courts allow deferrals of up to one year. Most state courts allow hardship exemptions for people who are caregivers, self-employed with demonstrated financial hardship, or who have a medical condition. You request these through the juror portal or by mailing the form that usually comes attached to the summons.

Attorneys and judges are not automatically exempt from jury duty, incidentally. Active-duty military, police officers, and firefighters are exempt in some states but not all. Check your specific state's exemption list, which is always published on the court's official website.

The Jury Duty Phone Scam: What It Sounds Like and What to Do

Because the phone scam is far more common than a forged document, it deserves specific treatment. The call typically follows a script with these elements: the caller identifies as a deputy, marshal, or court officer; they tell you that you missed jury duty; they say a warrant has been issued or is about to be issued for your arrest; and they offer you the chance to avoid arrest by paying a fine immediately — usually by wire transfer, prepaid debit card (Green Dot, Vanilla Visa), or cryptocurrency.

The reason for the urgency is deliberate. If you have time to think, you'll realize you never received a summons. The script is designed to skip past that by making fear the dominant emotion. Some callers have your home address, which they've pulled from voter rolls. Some have your previous employer. Some spoof their caller ID to display a real courthouse phone number — this is trivially easy with VoIP services and free apps.

What to do if you get this call: hang up. You don't need to explain yourself. If you're worried there's a one-in-a-hundred chance it's real, call the court directly using the number from the official.gov website and ask whether there's any record of a missed appearance under your name. There won't be. Courts don't issue arrest warrants for missing jury duty without first mailing a show-cause order, and they don't collect fines over the phone.

Report the call to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov and to your state attorney general's office. If the scammer claimed to be a federal marshal, report it to the U.S. Marshals Service at usmarshals.gov — they track these impersonation cases actively. The IC3 at ic3.gov accepts reports as well. Your report won't get your money back if you were defrauded, but the aggregate data helps law enforcement identify and dismantle the call centers that run these operations, many of which are located overseas but operate through domestic relay numbers.