What's is like to be a magistrate?

[RoseyOldCrow]

My retired DH is considering becoming a magistrate; he fits all the appropriate criteria & though having no legal experience he has held down various complex, senior roles in business for many years so I believe is well able to fill the role.

So I guess my question is, does anyone have any experience of being a magistrate?
Any advice is very welcome!
Thanks.

I'm a magistrates legal advisor (we sit in court with magistrates and advise them on the law) so I work with magistrates day in day out. If you/he have any questions I'd do my best to answer.

In general, you deal with a variety of work ranging from very dull speeding etc right the way up deciding on sentence for a range of serious offences. You decided whether people should be released on bail. Hear trials and decide whether you find people guilty or not. It's very varied work and usually very interesting.

Thanks, @Wisemensay - you must have an interesting role, does it require much tolerance on your part? 😉

From a selfish perspective, are the days typically very long? I'm partially disabled & will have to adjust to him not being around (I know I can, with a bit of planning, but just want to manage my own anxiety regarding this.)

Has personal security ever become an issue for any magistrate that you have been involved with, or indeed yourself? (I ask because when I served on a jury, decades ago, all 12 of us were intimidated in court by the defendant's family & friends)

As a new magistrate, would he be broken in gently with lesser cases or just join a taxi-rank type system straight away?

I'm sure we will have other questions, but these will do as a starter! Thanks for your time replying x

Haha we need many skills and not all of them are legal!

The days vary very much but I would say on average I'm done at 4.30ish. That may vary in different areas. Occasionally courts may run late but that is the exception and not the rule. It would start around 9.30. He could also sit half days only so morning or afternoon rather than a full day.

I've not personally had any problems with security and I don't know any colleagues who have either.

He would have a period of training and then when sitting in court would be buddied up with another magistrate to act as his mentor. He'd usually do fairly straight forward work first and completely supported.

Hope that helps.

It helps, thank you.
💐

This is so interesting, may I ask a question @RoseyOldCrow?

My friend applied to be a Magistrate about 30 years ago ( she didn't in the end, due to moving abroad), but she was told she needed to visit at least one prison before she'd be considered and had to make her own arrangements to do so.

Is that still the case?

Sorry, my question was to @Wisemensay obviously

Following and will come back.

@WorraLiberty not in our area. We do like magistrates to visit a prison but we arrange it. It hasn't hasn't happening for the last two year with covid and hasn't stopped magistrates joining the roll.

Very intersesting thread, I have myself wondered about being a magistrate at a point when I'm not working full time.

I wondered @Wisemensay if you have a sense of how much travel is required ? E.g. if the magistrate is connected to (let's say Oxford), would they often have to travel to other magistrates' courts which might be quite some distance away from Oxford ?

[quote Wisemensay]@WorraLiberty not in our area. We do like magistrates to visit a prison but we arrange it. It hasn't hasn't happening for the last two year with covid and hasn't stopped magistrates joining the roll.[/quote]
Ahh ok, thanks for replying.

It would really depend on the area. Magistrates are usually assigned to one court or one county. Where I work it's a small county so not much milage in between the three court houses. I couldn't say for sure in larger counties but I don't see why you couldn't specify one court house only to reduce travel. At the end of the day you're a volunteer and we're very grateful for the service people give.