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Paul Secher explores what’s proving most challenging for those seeking to demonstrate their readiness for appointment under the new framework
The new Judicial Skills and Abilities Framework (JSAF) came into being for judicial selection exercises conducted by the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) in October 2025. Since then, almost all judicial selection exercises have been subject to the new framework. Written by judges for prospective judges, as well as those already following a judicial career – and with input from the Judicial College – the JSAF provides a single, clear competency framework, applicable to everyone seeking judicial appointment, at almost all levels, from Deputy District Judge right up to the High Court.
The JSAF comes into play at all stages of the judicial selection process. The focus of this article is on how you can best prepare for the application and self-assessment stage. Used well, the skills and abilities framework will help you, as you seek to provide evidence of your experience and suitability for judicial appointment. You need to demonstrate your skills and abilities with strong examples from your career at the Bar – and sometimes away from the Bar – within a very limited wordcount, 300 words maximum for each of the five (six, in the case of leadership roles) skills and abilities. So, making every word count, is a must.
What do candidates find most challenging as they seek to navigate the framework and demonstrate an alignment of their skills and abilities with the level of appointment they are seeking? How do you unearth your best examples to illustrate competency compliance? When it comes to choosing between a strong recent example and an older, even stronger piece of evidence of your skill and ability, how should you balance strength on the one hand and recency on the other? Can you use a single case to demonstrate more than one skill or ability or is it better to make use of several different case examples in addressing the requirements of a single section of the five-part framework? These are all questions which crop up as candidates prepare their self-assessments.
The good news is that plenty of help is available – much of it from the JAC itself. Cast your eye over the main competency areas of the framework, each of which has between three and six bullet points, except for ‘Leadership’, which has eight. The five main skills and abilities areas, applicable to all applications are:
You will soon get a feel for what is required. You may also quickly see where your strengths lie and which skills you already have which could be transferable. Certain skills may have been acquired so long ago that you take them for granted. A sort of unconscious competence. While you may take them for granted, the selection panel will not. So don’t forget to evidence those skills with strong examples wherever appropriate.
Make full use of the JAC website, which offers valuable guidance, case studies and contrasting strong and weak examples, showing how the selection panel might grade evidence in a self-assessment, applying the skills and abilities framework. These can guide you as you put together a range of examples from your past work, to test how well your experience might align with the framework competencies. If you are unsure about whether one of your examples is at the right level for the role you are applying for, then run that example by someone you know well, who has experience at the required level.
Your self-assessment is a vital part of your judicial appointment application. What you write will enable the selection panel to come to the right conclusions about when and how you have responded to challenges in the past – and how you might transfer your acquired skills and abilities, in fulfilling your role as a judicial office holder. While you do not have to produce examples of your experience dealing with every aspect of each competency, your application is likely to be stronger if you can cover each bullet point under all the competency headings, within the limited word count.
Being completely familiar with the framework, and having thought about your career to date and how your practice can align with the competencies, you should be able to choose examples which are specific and relevant and demonstrate your compliance with each of the areas of competency. Don’t use up too many words on the background and context of each of your examples. State clearly what you needed to do; what you actually did; and how you did it; then explain the result – and what you took from the experience.
Direct all your examples to what you did, the actions you took and keep your language in the first person. Don’t generalise or jargonise – always remember that selection panels include lay members, who are unlikely to be familiar with much of the legal terminology which may be commonplace in your area of practice. Be sensible with the number of examples used to show competence in a single area. One example is probably not enough. Many, short examples will probably be too many and may lack depth. Try to strike a balance. Recent examples are usually good, provided they are strong. But don’t ignore an older one, especially if it is stronger. And there may be good reasons why you do not have so much recent material to draw on. Your best examples will obviously need to be relevant to a stated skill or ability. Don’t worry about having too many strong examples. Keep a note of those you have not used in your self-assessment and dig them out again in preparation for your selection day interview, when you may have a chance to enhance your application by articulating further examples, including some which have arisen in the months between application and interview.
An important JAC document which you will wish to study in advance of submitting an application and which you should have beside you when preparing your self-assessment, is the ‘Judicial Skills and Abilities Framework: Legal Model Statements’. This reproduces the skills and abilities areas in turn; breaks each one down into its constituent parts and then explains in parallel columns: ‘What this means’ and ‘How this might be demonstrated’. Under this latter heading are positive and negative indicators of the particular skill and ability.
Another, more recently published JAC guidance piece provides prospective applicants with prompts to help you to think about which of your examples may be most relevant to each of the skill and ability areas. Prompts are in the form of questions. So, for instance, under ‘Communication skills’, after being asked to ‘describe a time when you successfully defused an emotionally charged situation’, you are prompted with questions along the lines of: ‘What factors did you take into account when deciding how to approach the situation? How did your style of communication help you to achieve a successful outcome?’ And under ‘Effective working’, there are prompts highlighting situations where you have been faced with an unexpected situation that required speedy resolution or where conflicting priorities required an innovative solution.
The JSAF lies at the core of judicial appointment selection, throughout the recruitment process. Whatever judicial role you are seeking, take advantage, at an early stage of the extensive help and support which is available to you, much of it provided by the JAC itself, including online guidance, judicial work shadowing, pre-application seminars held before competitions launch, and the JAC’s own monthly newsletter: ‘Judging Your Future’, which includes notices of current and future selection exercises.
Paul Secher LLB is Founding Director of ‘Judicial & Silk’ (formerly ‘JSB Judicial’), a professional firm specialising in career development in the legal profession, with particular reference to the judiciary, supporting those seeking appointment at all levels: www.judicial.org.uk; paul.secher@judicial.org.uk; 07956 528125.
The new Judicial Skills and Abilities Framework (JSAF) came into being for judicial selection exercises conducted by the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) in October 2025. Since then, almost all judicial selection exercises have been subject to the new framework. Written by judges for prospective judges, as well as those already following a judicial career – and with input from the Judicial College – the JSAF provides a single, clear competency framework, applicable to everyone seeking judicial appointment, at almost all levels, from Deputy District Judge right up to the High Court.
The JSAF comes into play at all stages of the judicial selection process. The focus of this article is on how you can best prepare for the application and self-assessment stage. Used well, the skills and abilities framework will help you, as you seek to provide evidence of your experience and suitability for judicial appointment. You need to demonstrate your skills and abilities with strong examples from your career at the Bar – and sometimes away from the Bar – within a very limited wordcount, 300 words maximum for each of the five (six, in the case of leadership roles) skills and abilities. So, making every word count, is a must.
What do candidates find most challenging as they seek to navigate the framework and demonstrate an alignment of their skills and abilities with the level of appointment they are seeking? How do you unearth your best examples to illustrate competency compliance? When it comes to choosing between a strong recent example and an older, even stronger piece of evidence of your skill and ability, how should you balance strength on the one hand and recency on the other? Can you use a single case to demonstrate more than one skill or ability or is it better to make use of several different case examples in addressing the requirements of a single section of the five-part framework? These are all questions which crop up as candidates prepare their self-assessments.
The good news is that plenty of help is available – much of it from the JAC itself. Cast your eye over the main competency areas of the framework, each of which has between three and six bullet points, except for ‘Leadership’, which has eight. The five main skills and abilities areas, applicable to all applications are:
You will soon get a feel for what is required. You may also quickly see where your strengths lie and which skills you already have which could be transferable. Certain skills may have been acquired so long ago that you take them for granted. A sort of unconscious competence. While you may take them for granted, the selection panel will not. So don’t forget to evidence those skills with strong examples wherever appropriate.
Make full use of the JAC website, which offers valuable guidance, case studies and contrasting strong and weak examples, showing how the selection panel might grade evidence in a self-assessment, applying the skills and abilities framework. These can guide you as you put together a range of examples from your past work, to test how well your experience might align with the framework competencies. If you are unsure about whether one of your examples is at the right level for the role you are applying for, then run that example by someone you know well, who has experience at the required level.
Your self-assessment is a vital part of your judicial appointment application. What you write will enable the selection panel to come to the right conclusions about when and how you have responded to challenges in the past – and how you might transfer your acquired skills and abilities, in fulfilling your role as a judicial office holder. While you do not have to produce examples of your experience dealing with every aspect of each competency, your application is likely to be stronger if you can cover each bullet point under all the competency headings, within the limited word count.
Being completely familiar with the framework, and having thought about your career to date and how your practice can align with the competencies, you should be able to choose examples which are specific and relevant and demonstrate your compliance with each of the areas of competency. Don’t use up too many words on the background and context of each of your examples. State clearly what you needed to do; what you actually did; and how you did it; then explain the result – and what you took from the experience.
Direct all your examples to what you did, the actions you took and keep your language in the first person. Don’t generalise or jargonise – always remember that selection panels include lay members, who are unlikely to be familiar with much of the legal terminology which may be commonplace in your area of practice. Be sensible with the number of examples used to show competence in a single area. One example is probably not enough. Many, short examples will probably be too many and may lack depth. Try to strike a balance. Recent examples are usually good, provided they are strong. But don’t ignore an older one, especially if it is stronger. And there may be good reasons why you do not have so much recent material to draw on. Your best examples will obviously need to be relevant to a stated skill or ability. Don’t worry about having too many strong examples. Keep a note of those you have not used in your self-assessment and dig them out again in preparation for your selection day interview, when you may have a chance to enhance your application by articulating further examples, including some which have arisen in the months between application and interview.
An important JAC document which you will wish to study in advance of submitting an application and which you should have beside you when preparing your self-assessment, is the ‘Judicial Skills and Abilities Framework: Legal Model Statements’. This reproduces the skills and abilities areas in turn; breaks each one down into its constituent parts and then explains in parallel columns: ‘What this means’ and ‘How this might be demonstrated’. Under this latter heading are positive and negative indicators of the particular skill and ability.
Another, more recently published JAC guidance piece provides prospective applicants with prompts to help you to think about which of your examples may be most relevant to each of the skill and ability areas. Prompts are in the form of questions. So, for instance, under ‘Communication skills’, after being asked to ‘describe a time when you successfully defused an emotionally charged situation’, you are prompted with questions along the lines of: ‘What factors did you take into account when deciding how to approach the situation? How did your style of communication help you to achieve a successful outcome?’ And under ‘Effective working’, there are prompts highlighting situations where you have been faced with an unexpected situation that required speedy resolution or where conflicting priorities required an innovative solution.
The JSAF lies at the core of judicial appointment selection, throughout the recruitment process. Whatever judicial role you are seeking, take advantage, at an early stage of the extensive help and support which is available to you, much of it provided by the JAC itself, including online guidance, judicial work shadowing, pre-application seminars held before competitions launch, and the JAC’s own monthly newsletter: ‘Judging Your Future’, which includes notices of current and future selection exercises.
Paul Secher explores what’s proving most challenging for those seeking to demonstrate their readiness for appointment under the new framework
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