Read July 2015, decades after most people get it assigned, which turned out to be the better way round.
Coming to it as an adult, the trial is not the centre. The first half is a childhood summer with almost no plot, and Boo Radley is the actual subject. The court case is the thing the children are too young to understand and the reader is not.
Atticus has not survived the last decade of argument intact, and the criticism is fair. The book is still better than the reputation it now carries.