Judge CV Examples & Writing Guide

Nobody becomes a judge on the strength of a CV alone. In England and Wales most judicial posts are filled through Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) selection exercises: an online application, often a qualifying test, independent references, and for shortlisted candidates a selection day with an interview. Whether or not the form asks for a CV, your career record is the document every answer is built from and every statement is checked against, so it has to be accurate to the month.

This sample is for a solicitor-advocate with seventeen years' experience who has sat as a fee-paid Deputy District Judge in the magistrates' courts and is applying for a salaried post. The person and the firm are invented.

Judges in England and Wales are appointed, not elected, but the route still depends on the post, and the route decides what your CV has to do. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own appointment bodies.

• Senior judges (High Court and above) are also selected through the JAC, with senior judges on the panel, and Supreme Court justices through a separate selection commission. These applications ask for a detailed account of your career, judgments, publications and significant cases. Your CV has to match that account exactly.
• Salaried judges in the courts, such as District Judges and Circuit Judges, are recruited through JAC competitions. Legislation sets a minimum period of post-qualification experience, which differs by post, and prior fee-paid judicial experience usually helps. The panel reads a written application, so your CV is the source for several answers rather than the only document.
• Fee-paid posts such as Deputy District Judge and Recorder are the usual first step. You keep your practice and sit a set number of days a year. Competitions appear on the JAC's published programme, so build your record well before the vacancy opens.
• Tribunal judges (Employment Tribunals and the chambers of the First-tier and Upper Tribunal) are also appointed through the JAC, in both salaried and fee-paid roles. The requirements are set out in each exercise's candidate information rather than in a single national exam, so read that document before you write anything.
• Magistrates (justices of the peace) are unpaid volunteers who sit with a legal adviser. No legal qualification is required, and recruitment runs through local advisory committees rather than the JAC. Check the current guidance rather than assuming.

• Years qualified and as what. The eligibility rule is a hard gate. Put your admission or call date (solicitor, barrister or Chartered Legal Executive) and any higher rights near the top, not buried at the bottom.
• Breadth of the work you can handle. A panel filling a post with mixed work wants someone who has done civil and criminal, jury and non-jury, applications and appeals. If your practice is narrow, show the adjacent work: arbitrations, fee-paid sittings, tribunal or panel roles, regulatory hearings.
• Volume and outcomes. Cases carried, trials to verdict, applications argued, matters decided, time to judgment. This is the closest thing the job has to production numbers, and very few applicants include it.
• Written work. Judges write. Reported cases, skeleton arguments, articles, practitioner texts and CPD training materials all count, and you may be asked for examples.
• Service and reputation. Law society committees, pro bono, teaching, mentoring, and community roles. Panels and referees look for this evidence and applicants routinely under-report it.
• A clean record. Disciplinary findings, negligence claims, tax affairs, criminal convictions and County Court judgments can all be relevant to the good character assessment. Do not hide anything on the CV that the checks will reveal.

“The applications that go to the top of the pile give me numbers and specifics: cases carried, trials to verdict, time to judgment, the pro bono and committee work they did on their own time. The ones that go to the bottom describe a practice in adjectives and expect the panel to guess at the volume.”

Four lines at the top: years qualified, the courts and case types, the volume, and what you are applying for. Keep it factual. This is not the place for a personal mission statement.

Legal CVs drift into descriptions of the office rather than the person. Eight lines rewritten with the detail a panel can check.

A judicial CV does not need a soft-skills block. What it needs is a precise statement of the law you know and the courtroom work you can do.

• Judicial and courtroom: list and case management, admissibility rulings, exclusion of evidence and strike-out or summary judgment applications, findings of fact and reasoned decisions, sentencing, bail and remand, contempt, directions to the jury, judge-led settlement hearings, judicial conduct and recusal.

• Subject matter, listed honestly: crime, civil, family, probate, youth, housing and possession, employment, social security, administrative and regulatory, immigration and asylum. Name the areas you have carried a caseload in, not the ones you once read about.

• Writing and research: reasoned judgments, appeal skeleton arguments, written advice, Westlaw and Lexis, CPD training materials, articles in practitioner journals.

• Practical: court case management systems and digital case files, video hearing platforms, interpreters and language access, courtroom security procedures, and any language you can work in.

• Admission or call gets its own block with the year, for example "Admitted as a solicitor, 2009" or "Called to the Bar, 2009". Include higher rights of audience and any admission in other jurisdictions. State that your practising certificate is current and whether you have any disciplinary history, because the good character checks ask and silence looks worse than a clean statement.
• Judicial assistant posts are among the strongest lines on a legal CV. Write them as "Judicial Assistant to Lady Justice Doe, Court of Appeal (Civil Division), 2009 to 2010". Use the judge's correct judicial title and the court's full name.
• Academic and vocational details stay relevant longer in law than in any other field: degree classification, prizes, mooting, law clinic work, Inn of Court scholarships and where you did your training contract or pupillage are all worth listing even fifteen years out.
• Judicial training belongs on the page if you have it. Judicial College induction and continuation courses, and any authorisation (a "ticket") to hear particular work, are the usual entries.
• Professional and community service is something selection panels look for evidence of. List committees, offices held, pro bono hours, teaching, mentoring and any service as a magistrate, tribunal member or school governor.
• Publications and talks get their own short list, or an annex if there are many. Applications for senior posts can ask for all of them, so keep a running file.

• Two to four pages. This is the rare UK job where a longer document is accepted, because admissions, publications, service and case history do not compress. Do not pad, but do not cut a real record to fit two pages.
• Follow the candidate information for the post above everything else. If the JAC or the appointing body asks for a specific form, word limit or format, that instruction beats every piece of general CV advice.
• Reverse chronological, with exact months and years. Gaps get asked about, so account for them.
• Conservative typography. Serif face, black text, plenty of white space. No colour blocks, no icons, no columns.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status, no SRA or Bar number unless the form asks for it.
• Have examples of your written work ready: a reserved judgment if you have sat, otherwise an advice or skeleton argument you drafted yourself, with client details redacted and permission where needed.
• Save as PDF and name the file with your surname and the post, because selection staff handle many applications at once.