How to become a judge: routes to the bench from a legal career

Start with the honest framing: there is no single national rulebook for who can sit as a judge.

Eligibility is set by whichever court system or agency fills the seat, and the rules are not uniform across the country.

Our research verified published eligibility requirements for one bench only — the federal immigration courts, covered below — so read this answer with that limit in mind.

The profession's own entry bar comes first.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that lawyers typically need a law degree and a state license, which usually requires passing a bar examination — a baseline you have already cleared if you are in practice.

If you have not made that crossing yet, our guide on how to become a lawyer walks through the steps from college to a first legal job.

That bench is the federal immigration courts: EOIR's core requirements for immigration judges are an LL.B., J.D. or LL.M., active bar membership, and seven years of post-bar-admission legal experience.

Elsewhere, requirements are set seat by seat and system by system, so confirm them with the court, commission or agency that fills the bench you have in mind.

So the verified answer is narrow: for immigration judges, yes.

For other benches our research did not confirm the rule, so check it with the body that fills the seat.

The route this page maps assumes you are, or are becoming, a licensed attorney, and everything below builds on that: how seats get filled, and the record they are filled from.

Judicial selection comes in three broad forms — elections, appointments and merit selection — and the form a seat uses decides what a candidacy actually looks like.

The same lawyer would run entirely different races for each.

Judicial elections.

Where voters choose judges, the path to the bench runs through a public campaign: name recognition in the legal community and beyond, a record that holds up to public advertising, and the endorsement and fundraising work that comes with a campaign.

A candidacy is political in the literal sense, whatever your practice area is.

Appointments.

Where an elected official or governing body appoints judges directly, the path runs through that decision-maker instead.

The currency is a verifiable record — cases handled, results, reputation — plus references and visibility with the people and organizations the appointer listens to.

Merit selection.

In commission-based systems, a nominating panel screens candidates and passes a list to the appointing authority, so the first gate is the commission's idea of merit: your application, your record, and your standing with the lawyers and community members doing the screening.

Which form applies — and how each state combines them for its different courts — is decided within that state's own system.

There is no single national selection process to prepare for, so the first move for any aspiring judge is finding out how the specific seat you want is filled.

Whatever the selection method, the raw material is the same: a legal record worth selecting.

Judges decide other people's cases for a living, and the record that convinces a voter, an appointing official or a screening commission is built in practice — handling cases, courtroom time, and a professional reputation you would be comfortable having examined, because once you are a candidate your record becomes somebody's homework.

One credential sits closest to the bench: the judicial clerkship.

BLS describes judicial clerkships as typically 1- or 2-year terms that some law graduates take before working as a lawyer, and NALP counted them at 10.0% of all Class of 2025 jobs.

A term inside a court shows you how judicial decisions actually get made — our judicial clerkships guide covers the role in depth.

Courtroom-heavy roles are a natural place to build the rest of the record.

BLS lists prosecutor and public defender among the titles government lawyers hold, and both jobs are built on trying cases; our prosecutor and public defender guides cover each role.

A firm litigation practice builds many of the same raw materials — depositions, motions, trial work — plus the visibility in a legal community that any candidacy needs.

None of these are formal prerequisites.

They are the record a candidacy is assembled from, and you build them over years, not months — which is also why "how long does it take" has no fixed answer.

The timeline runs from law school through licensure, the practice years, and whatever the selection process itself adds.

Federal benches sit outside the state election-and-commission machinery entirely.

Not every federal judge arrives the same way — immigration judges, for example, are appointed by the U.S. Attorney General, as the next section covers — and for the federal judgeships filled by nomination and confirmation, our research did not verify who nominates, who confirms or how the steps run.

For those seats, the selection question changes shape — from winning voters or a commission to being nominated, vetted and confirmed.

For a lawyer, the inputs you control are professional: a substantive legal record, a reputation for integrity, and standing in the communities that nominate and confirm.

The rest — who is nominated for a given court, and when — is decided by the officials who run the process, not by the applicant.

One honesty note: our research for this page verified national BLS pay and employment figures for judges as an occupation, not for federal judges specifically, and not the nomination mechanics, so treat this section as career framing rather than process detail.

The bodies that run nominations publish how they work, and that published process — at the time you read this — is the one that counts.

Alongside the elected and appointed state benches sit judicial seats tied to a specific docket — magistrate judge roles, administrative adjudication, and the immigration courts.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics treats several of them as one occupational picture: the median annual wage in May 2025 was $153,990 for judges, magistrate judges and magistrates, and $117,860 for administrative law judges, adjudicators and hearing officers.

The scale is worth seeing plainly: about 25,300 jobs for judges, magistrate judges and magistrates and about 17,400 for administrative law judges, adjudicators and hearing officers in 2025, in an occupation BLS projects to grow 2% from 2025 to 2035 — slower than average.

Against the roughly 863,700 lawyer jobs BLS counted the same year, judicial seats are scarce relative to the profession that wants them.

Immigration judges are the route with the clearest published requirements.

They are appointed by the U.S. Attorney General and hear cases at roughly 70 locations nationwide, some in detention facilities or by video.

EOIR's core requirements are an LL.B., J.D. or LL.M., active bar membership and seven years of post-bar legal experience, and finalists undergo a background check covering bar complaints, taxes, credit and criminal history, plus fingerprinting and a drug test.

Our immigration attorney guide covers the practice those judges adjudicate from the lawyer's side.

Two gaps to be straight about: our research did not cover how magistrate judge seats are filled — the hiring court's own postings are the place to check — and administrative adjudication, deciding disputes inside government rather than arguing them, is a neighboring seat our government attorney guide covers in its own right.

Everything on this page happens after the legal career, not instead of it: a judgeship is an exit from practice, and the record that wins one is built in a legal job.

If you are assembling that record now, our attorney job board lists law firm openings across practice areas and states, and the attorney careers hub maps the profession's routes — firm, government, in-house and beyond.

Career information, not legal advice. Judgeship eligibility and selection are governed by the courts, commissions and agencies that fill each seat — confirm the current rules with the body you would apply to.