Questions to Ask a Judge as a Student
Questions for a student meeting a judge on a courthouse visit, at a career day, or for a class assignment: how they got to the bench, what the work involves day to day, and how to get yourself into a courtroom and into the profession.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What did you study before law school?
Why ask it
An easy opener that usually surprises students. Judges come from history, engineering, music, teaching, and the military, and hearing that there is no required major removes a worry a lot of students carry about having chosen the wrong subject.
What was your first job after law school, and how did you get it?
Why ask it
Gets you the unglamorous beginning rather than the summary of a career. The mechanics matter here: whether it came from a professor, a summer job, a family contact, or a cold application, and how that would work differently now.
How long were you a lawyer before you became a judge, and what kind of law did you practice?
Why ask it
Most judges spent a decade or more in practice, often in an area unrelated to what they now hear. It reframes the bench as a late-career move rather than a goal you aim at from school, which is how students usually picture it.
Did you plan on this, or did it happen another way?
Why ask it
Ask this rather than what inspired you. The honest answer often involves being asked, being available at the right moment, or an election nobody expected. Students benefit from hearing that senior careers are not usually the result of a plan.
What kind of court is this, and what would I see if I sat in the back this afternoon?
Why ask it
Anchors the visit in what is actually happening in the building. It also produces the useful warning that most of what you will see is procedural, brief, and nothing like a television trial, so you know what you are looking at.
How much of your job is reading and writing?
Why ask it
Usually most of it, which is the single most important thing a student considering law can learn. Follow up on how long a written ruling takes, and you will understand why writing courses matter more than public speaking ones.
What do you do in a normal day that a student would never guess?
Why ask it
Invites the parts nobody depicts: reading pre-sentence reports, managing scheduling disputes, waiting for an interpreter, deciding whether a matter can go ahead at all. This is the answer worth putting in your assignment.
What skills actually matter for this work?
Why ask it
Expect writing clearly, reading fast without skimming, listening carefully, and staying calm when someone is angry at you. Notice what does not appear: memorizing law, arguing, or winning. That gap is the useful part of the answer.
What do mock trial and debate teams get wrong about real courtrooms?
Why ask it
A genuinely fun question for a judge who has volunteered at competitions. The answers usually involve theatrics, objections raised for effect, and speeches where a real lawyer would concede a point and move on.
Could I sit in on a session, and is there anything I should not do while I am here?
Why ask it
Most courtrooms are open to the public, and asking permission plainly nearly always gets a yes plus practical guidance about phones, entering during testimony, and where to sit. It also turns a short conversation into an afternoon of observation.
What do you look for when you take on an intern or a clerk?
Why ask it
You are asking for hiring criteria from the person who applies them. Answers tend to name writing samples, attention to detail, and reliability over grades and prestige, and sometimes come with an invitation to apply.
What jobs in this building do not require law school?
Why ask it
Court clerks, court reporters, interpreters, probation officers, bailiffs, and administrators keep the place running, and students rarely hear that these careers exist. Useful whether or not you end up wanting law school.
What should I know about paying for law school before I commit to it?
Why ask it
A fair question and judges will answer it seriously, since they see what debt does to young lawyers' choices. Expect frank comments about which jobs the debt forces people into and which public service programs exist.
Is there a part of this job you would not have chosen if you had known?
Why ask it
Better than asking about challenges, because it invites something specific: the isolation, the loss of ordinary friendships with lawyers, the volume of distressing material, the loss of privacy in an elected position.
What do you do when you are genuinely unsure how to decide something?
Why ask it
Students assume the law supplies an answer and the judge finds it. The real process, going back to the text, asking a clerk to argue the other side, writing it out to see if it holds, is far more interesting and much closer to how any hard thinking works.
Have you ever been wrong about someone who came into your courtroom?
Why ask it
Ask this later in the conversation, and expect a general answer. Judges who have been on the bench a long time usually have one, and their willingness to say so tells you something about the humility the job requires.
What is the hardest thing to keep out of a decision?
Why ask it
Sharper than asking how they stay impartial, which invites a rehearsed answer. Judges may name a lawyer they find irritating, sympathy for a party, or how tired they are by the afternoon, which is more honest and more instructive.
Who does well in this profession that you would not expect to?
Why ask it
A good question for any student worried they are not the type. Answers often describe quiet, thorough people rather than confident performers, and that is worth hearing from someone who has watched hundreds of lawyers work.
If you were starting now, would you do anything differently?
Why ask it
You will hear where the profession has changed: the job market, the volume of written work, the technology, the routes into practice. It also gets an answer aimed at your situation rather than a summary of theirs.
Is there someone else here I should talk to, and may I follow up with you?
Why ask it
The question that turns a single visit into a contact. Ask for a specific person and a specific way to get in touch, then send a short thank-you within a couple of days that mentions one thing you learned.
Making a Courthouse Visit Count
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before you go
Find out what court it is
A municipal court, a family court, a state trial court, and a federal court hear entirely different matters. Look up the court's own website, which will usually say what it handles. Two minutes of this makes your questions specific instead of generic.
Look up the judge
Most courts publish a short biography, and many judges' rulings are searchable. Knowing that they practiced environmental law for twenty years or ran a public defender's office gives you a first question nobody else in the group will ask.
Write more questions than you need
Bring eight to ten on paper, expecting to use four. Conversations move sideways, and having a list means you can follow the interesting turn without losing your thread. Reading from a list is not a problem and shows you prepared.
Check the practicalities
Courthouses have security screening, and many bar phones or require them to be off. Dress as you would for an interview. If you are recording for an assignment, ask permission in advance rather than on the day.
If you get to observe
- Enter and leave between matters rather than during testimony, and sit at the back.
- Silence your phone entirely, and do not photograph or record unless you have been told you may.
- Stand when the judge enters if others do, and follow the room's cues on when to sit.
- Take notes on what confused you. Those become your best questions afterwards.
- Do not speak to parties, witnesses, or jurors, and do not discuss what you saw where they can hear you.
- Expect long pauses, continuances, and matters that end in four minutes. That is what a court day is.
Questions that will not get you anywhere
- Anything about a case currently before them, including a case you have read about. Judges are barred from commenting and the question puts them in an awkward spot.
- How they would rule on a contested political question. This will be declined, and it changes the tone of the rest of the conversation.
- Whether the outcome of a famous trial was correct. Ask instead what procedure that kind of case follows.
- Legal advice for your own family's situation. Even a hypothetical framed as a friend's problem will be turned down.
- What is the most interesting case you have had. It sounds good but usually produces a story they cannot tell in detail. Asking what they still think about works better.
Afterwards
Write it up the same day
Memory for exact phrasing fades within hours. If this is for an assignment, get the quotations down while you still have them, and mark anything you are not sure you recorded correctly rather than guessing.
Send a short thank-you
A few sentences by email, naming one specific thing you took away. Judges receive class visits constantly, and the students who write afterwards are the ones remembered when an internship comes up.
Follow the lead you were given
If the judge suggested talking to a clerk, a public defender, or a court reporter, do it within the two weeks and say who sent you. That referral is the most valuable thing you left with.