As a lawyer I believe I would champion professional jurors provided there were some limitations and trainings put in place.
My experience with grand jury is they tend to get a bit numb to the process and rubber-stampish.
I'm certainly for people doing this sort of civic duty....but under certain circumstances, the burden is just insane.
Right in the heart of COVID, my college roommate got called into federal grand jury duty in Trenton. For upwards of EIGHTEEN months, he had to be on call to go in every week to hear cases.....in TRENTON. And he had to go pretty often (I believe it was like 60-70% of the time if I remember correctly)
I mean, that's absolutely absurd. For certain people, being unavailable/unreliably available 1 day a week for that long could be a career-killer. Luckily he was at a job he hated anyway and left shortly after, but there absolutely zero reason for someone to be forced to do that. I'd say literally anything to get out of that.