Questions to Ask a Judge
Questions for a conversation with a sitting judge, whether at a bar association event, a scheduled interview, or half an hour in chambers. They cover how a docket actually works, how decisions get made, and the limits on what a judge is permitted to discuss. This is the general set. If you are hosting a school or community group, the good questions to ask a judge set is pitched for a visiting group, and if you are weighing a clerkship, the questions to ask judges cover that path.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What kinds of cases come before you?
Why ask it
Start here, because almost everything else depends on it. A traffic and misdemeanour docket, a family court, and a federal civil docket are different jobs with different pressures, and most people picture a criminal jury trial regardless of what the judge actually does.
How did you come to the bench?
Why ask it
Appointment, election, and retention are very different routes, and judges who ran for office will describe fundraising and campaigning that sits uneasily with the role. The answer also tells you what they did before, which shapes how they read cases.
What are you doing in the hour before you take the bench?
Why ask it
Concrete and rarely asked. Expect reading files, conferring with a clerk, and working out which of the morning's matters will actually be ready. It gives you the texture of the work in a way that questions about justice never do.
How many matters are on your calendar this week?
Why ask it
The number is usually startling, and it explains a great deal about why courts feel rushed to the people passing through them. Follow with how many of those will settle or be continued, since the answer is often most of them.
How much of the job is trials, and how much is everything else?
Why ask it
Trials are a small fraction of most judges' time. Hearing what fills the rest, motions, scheduling, plea hearings, written rulings, corrects the impression built by television and explains where cases are really decided.
What do lawyers do that genuinely helps you, and what makes your job harder?
Why ask it
Judges answer this precisely and it is useful to anyone who will ever be in a courtroom. Expect concrete complaints about briefs that bury the issue, and praise for concessions made early. The specifics reveal how much of a case is won on paper.
When you read the filings, what makes an argument persuasive?
Why ask it
You are asking about the craft rather than the outcome, which judges are free to discuss. Answers often prize candour about weaknesses over confident overstatement, which is the opposite of how advocacy is usually imagined.
How much discretion do you actually have in the outcome?
Why ask it
Less than people assume in some areas and more in others. Sentencing ranges, mandatory minimums, and statutory formulas constrain judges in ways the public rarely sees, and this question separates what the judge chose from what the law required.
What are you not allowed to take into account, even when you know it?
Why ask it
Rules of evidence and procedure keep relevant-sounding facts out, which is deeply counterintuitive to non-lawyers. The answer explains why a courtroom result can differ from what everyone in the room believes happened.
What can you not discuss with me, and why?
Why ask it
Worth asking early rather than blundering into it. Pending cases, private conversations about a matter, and anything approaching legal advice are off limits, and hearing the reasons makes the rest of the conversation easier for both of you.
What happens when someone appears in front of you without a lawyer?
Why ask it
Self-represented parties are common in family, housing, and small claims courts. Judges describe the awkward balance between explaining procedure and remaining neutral, which is one of the hardest practical problems in the job.
How do you decide whether to believe a witness?
Why ask it
Expect a wary answer, and that wariness is the point. Experienced judges tend to distrust demeanour and confidence, and look instead for consistency with documents and with facts not in dispute.
Do you ever change your mind while writing the decision?
Why ask it
Frequently, and judges will admit it if asked plainly. Writing forces the reasoning to hold together, and a conclusion that felt right at the hearing sometimes will not survive it. This is the most honest window into how judging works.
What is it like to be reversed on appeal?
Why ask it
The answer distinguishes judges who treat reversal as information from those who take it personally. It also usefully explains what an appeal actually reviews, which is rarely the facts and often only whether the law was applied correctly.
What do you do when you think the law requires a result you dislike?
Why ask it
One of the genuinely difficult parts of the role, and most judges have an example they can describe in general terms. Watch for whether they distinguish personal disagreement from legal error, which is the distinction the job rests on.
How do you keep the day's cases from following you home?
Why ask it
Judges in criminal, family, and juvenile courts see distressing material constantly with little of the support offered to other professions. Answers are practical and sometimes bleak, and it is a more respectful question than asking about the hardest case they ever had.
Is there a decision you still think about?
Why ask it
Ask late, and accept a general answer. Judges will often describe a case where the law and the outcome pulled apart, or a person they wondered about afterwards. This is the question that gets past the institutional voice.
What has changed in your courtroom since you started?
Why ask it
Better than asking about the future of the justice system. Expect specifics: remote hearings, self-represented litigants, caseload growth, changes in the kinds of cases filed. It gives you a picture of institutional change from inside.
What do you wish the public understood about what happens in here?
Why ask it
Judges rarely get to answer this and usually have something ready. Common answers involve how much is settled by agreement, how ordinary most cases are, and how little a courtroom resembles its dramatized version.
If someone has to appear in court for the first time, what should they know?
Why ask it
Practical and generous, and it usually produces advice about arriving early, bringing documents, and answering only what was asked. It is the part of the conversation most worth passing on to somebody else.
Talking With a Judge
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
What a judge cannot talk about
Pending and impending cases
Judicial conduct rules bar public comment on matters before them or likely to come before them. This is not evasion, and pressing on it puts them in an awkward position. If a case is what you care about, ask about the procedure it will follow rather than the merits.
Anything resembling legal advice
A judge cannot tell you what to do about your dispute, your landlord, or your custody arrangement, even socially. Asking makes the rest of the conversation guarded. Questions about how a process works are fine, questions about your own situation are not.
One-sided contact about a live matter
If you are a party in a case in front of this judge, do not approach them at all outside court. Contact with one side alone is prohibited and can affect your case. Route everything through your lawyer or the clerk's office.
Preparing for the conversation
- Find out which court and which docket. A district judge, a magistrate, an appellate judge, and a state trial judge do substantially different work.
- Sit in on a public session first if you can. Most courtrooms are open, and an hour of observation generates better questions than any reading.
- Get the form of address right: usually Your Honour in court, and Judge with the surname in conversation.
- Read one recent published decision if they write them. Referring to something specific they reasoned through is the single best way to open.
- Keep politics out of it. Questions about how a judge would rule on a contested public issue will be declined, and rightly.
Follow-ups that open things up
- Can you give me an example without the identifying details. Lets them illustrate a point while staying within the rules.
- What would the lawyers have done differently. Turns a general answer into concrete craft.
- How often does that actually happen. Useful whenever they describe a procedure, since many exist mostly on paper.
- Who else in the building would know about that. Court clerks, court reporters, and probation officers often see parts of the system judges do not.
- What did you think about that before you were a judge. Invites a comparison between the advocate's view and the bench's.
Different settings
A courthouse tour or public event
Time is short and shared. Pick two questions, ask them plainly, and leave room for others. Questions about the building, the docket, and the daily routine work better in a group than anything reflective.
A scheduled interview
Ask at the start whether they want anything treated as background, and whether their office needs to approve quotes. Judges are cautious with the press for good reason, and being clear about ground rules gets you more, not less.
An informal conversation
Judges are asked about their work constantly and about their opinions constantly. Asking about the mechanics instead, how a calendar is built, what a clerk actually does, is usually a relief and gets a longer answer.