Litigation is full of surprises. Sometimes you win cases you thought you would lose. Sometimes you lose cases you thought you would win. And sometimes you encounter things you never learned or had reason to deal with in law school or in practice. One of those rules (to many of us) is Fed. R. Civ. P. 39(c)—the advisory jury rule—which provides that "[i]n an action not triable of right by a jury, the court, on motion or on its own, may try an issue with an advisory jury." Don't worry. You now have a short primer on advisory juries in federal court and won't be blindsided if the issue comes up on short notice (and, actually, it may).