Video 8.1 Day in the life of a High Court Judge

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Video titled: Video 8.1 Day in the life of a High Court Judge

Mr. Justice Warby:  Is there a typical day for a High Court Judge? The answer is no. In the Queen's Bench, which is where I am, you can do work ranging from criminal trials on circuit, which can go on for three, four, five weeks; to the Court of Appeal, criminal division, dealing with all manner of criminal appeals; to media law, which is what I specialize in, which can be trials or applications; clinical negligence is a strong feature of the work that we do. And we also sit in the tribunals, often, all of us, I think, sit from time to time in the upper tribunal, Immigration and Asylum Chamber. So, it's an enormous variety of work and incredibly stimulating to be thrown into something with which you have little familiarity, and to need to deal with it. Of course, we get a lot of support from the council involved, from the solicitors involved and the staff.

Mr. Justice Birss:  Our day will start with reading papers, preparing things, do emails inevitably and then you are in a hearing or two. Most of the days spent listening obviously and maybe giving extemporary judgments during the course of those hearings and then after court there’s always more reading to do, writing judgments and that sort of thing. The big difference between my work as a Judge and my work in private practice is I go home earlier, I definitely go home significantly earlier than I did when I was in private practice. And more than that, although I certainly do still read papers in the evening as I ever did preparing for the next day, I just don't find I take my work home with me in my head. I am not thinking about cases in the same way that I did when I was in private practice. As a barrister I would be thinking about the questions I wanted to ask in cross examination the next day or thinking about, trying to think of arguments or something, just think, turning the case over in your mind. And I just don't do that. And I think it's because as a Judge you're not beholden to one side or the other, you are, of course you are in the middle and you're trying to do the right thing. And those pressures are quite significantly different. I don't find it is stressful. There is stress in judging, you need to keep on top of the work, you need to try and keep to the deadlines as best as you can, but the work itself isn't stressful the way I found private practice getting quite stressful. So that’s big a difference.

Mrs. Justice Theis:  There is no typical day, it can depend on whether you’re hearing a trial or short applications. The wide range of works in terms of the subject matter and the issues to be determined are both fascinating and stimulating and often cover areas that may be new to you.

Mr. Justice Cobb:  There are no typical days in the Family division. Our work is immensely varied. Some weeks we will be tasked with a long final hearing, which would involve hearing multiple witnesses, experts and lay witnesses. Other weeks we might be assigned to undertake the urgent applications. And in those weeks, we may hear many cases each day, which requires significant swift thinking in order to resolve urgent applications. Of course I sit mainly in London, but have responsibility as a Family Division Liaison Judge for the North-Eastern circuit. So, I spend a little under half of my time on the North-Eastern circuit, where I sit in one of three or four call centers there.

Lord Justice Singh:  Looking back on the six years I spent in the High Court, I now appreciate how varied the work was, particularly of a Queen's Bench Division Judge, which is where I sat. You do the full range of civil work including subjects like Administrative Law, Employment Law and other subjects, but also, you're going around the country often doing some of the most serious criminal trials with the jury. And I think that's very important work that we do.

Source: UK Judiciary

Credit: © Judiciary 2020

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