Structure of a Competition

Structure of a Competition 

JABS fulfils its statutory responsibility to recommend individuals for judicial office through a series of selection exercises, referred to as competitions.

Appointment to judicial office is a competitive process. While the details vary depending on the role being recruited, all competitions follow six broad stages:

1.    Planning
2.    Advertising and applications
3.    Sift
4.    Consultations
5.    Interview
6.    Recommendation

Competitions are undertaken by a panel of JABS Board members. Depending on the role being recruited, panels may also include lay advisers, legal advisers or tribunal members.

For court and legal tribunal roles, panels are chaired by a lay member and include an equal number of lay and legal or judicial members. For some tribunal competitions, specialist tribunal members may sit on the panel to provide subject-matter expertise.
 

Starting a Competition

A competition begins when JABS receives an official request from the Scottish Government to recruit for a judicial office.
The request sets out key information about the recruitment exercise, including:

•    the judicial office being recruited for
•    the number of vacancies
•    the location of vacancies (where applicable)
•    any specific requirements associated with the role

Once the request has been received, planning for the competition begins.
 

Planning and Outreach

During the planning stage, a competition panel is established and the assessment approach is developed.

Working with the Judicial Office for Scotland and other stakeholders, the panel identifies the qualities, skills and experience required for the role. It then designs assessment methods that will enable applicants to demonstrate their suitability throughout the recruitment process.

The panel is supported by the JABS Business Management Unit, which helps prepare application materials and interview documentation.

JABS may also undertake outreach activity before applications open. This may include online information events, videos published on the JABS Youtube channel, or a combination of both. These activities are intended to help potential applicants understand the role and the recruitment process.
 

Advertising and Applications

All competitions are normally advertised for four weeks.

Applications are submitted through the JABS online recruitment portal, GetGot. Applicants can save their progress and return to their application as often as they wish before submitting it.

Applications usually close at 12 noon on the advertised closing date. Applicants who have started an application will receive automated reminders before the deadline.

JABS does not normally accept late applications. Further information is available in the Late Applications Policy.
 

Sift

After applications close, JABS first checks that applicants meet any statutory eligibility requirements for the role.

Applications that meet these requirements proceed to the sift stage, where they are assessed against the published criteria for the role.

To support a fair assessment process, panel members do not see applicants' names or other identifying information during the sift.

For court and legal tribunal roles, legal competence is assessed by the legal or judicial members of the panel, while personal and judicial qualities are assessed collectively by the full panel. For tribunal roles requiring specialist knowledge, specialist panel members contribute to the assessment.

Once all applications have been considered, the panel decides which candidates will be invited to interview.

Depending on the size of the competition, this stage may take several days or several weeks to complete.

More information about how decisions are reached can be found in our guide to the decision-making process.
 

[Potential to have a video of a Board member speaking about the sift process here]

Consultations

JABS has a statutory requirement as set out in section 12(3) of the Judiciary and Courts (Scotland) Act 2008 to ensure that anyone recommended for appointment is “of good character”. 

To assist with this, JABS consults with a number of stakeholders including COPFS, professional bodies (such as the Law Society, Faculty of Advocates or bodies relevant to non-legal roles being recruited), and others.  Consultees are asked provide any information which may be relevant to JABS in the assessment of the suitability of the applicant to judicial office. 

Where consultees provide information which may be relevant, interviewees will be made aware of this at interview and will be given the opportunity to discuss any findings with the panel. 

Separately, candidates selected for interview need to complete an enhanced disclosure.  This is carried out by Disclosure Scotland and costs £25 which is paid by the candidate.  The JABS Business Management Unit will conduct identity checks with interview candidates. This involves a short MS Teams meeting where candidates will be asked to provide evidence of their identity which will then be sent to Disclosure Scotland in support of the enhanced disclosure.

Finally, JABS will, in conjunction with our partner Giant Screening, arrange to have social and general media background checks undertaken.  

Interviews

The purpose of interviews is to gather additional information on candidates’ legal (or, in the case of ordinary tribunal competitions, specialist) and personal/judicial competencies and their suitability for the role.  The interview may also be used to clarify any matters arising from the candidates’ application form or the consultation response received in respect of any candidate. 

Interviews are challenging and will involve an assessment of candidates’ legal (or specialist where appropriate) knowledge and their personal and judicial skills and competence. Interviews will be conducted by the same panel who conducted the sift. 

The structure of the interview will vary depending on the specific role, but will always include an assessment of legal (or specialist in the case of ordinary tribunal roles) knowledge and skill, as well as questions to test your personal and judicial qualities. 

The length of interviews will vary depending on the role being recruited, but typically will last anywhere from two hours five hours for the most senior roles.

Recommendations

The final stage is the recommendations for appointment.  Once the interviews are concluded, the panel will meet to decide which candidates should be recommended for the roles.  Making this recommendation involves more than just an assessment of performance at interview, the information contained in the application form is also included in conversations surrounding these decisions. 

Once the panel has made their decisions, the full Board convenes to confirm them.  This gives the Board the opportunity to ensure that the competition was undertaken in line with JABS policy and procedure and to offer Board members not involved in the competition the opportunity to speak with the panel. 

Once the Board has confirmed the recommendations made, the final stage of the competition is to submit the recommendations to the Scottish Government. Once this recommendation has been made, the competition is effectively complete and JABS involvement in the process ends. 

After the Competition

Whilst the competition itself ends after the recommendations are submitted to the Scottish Government, that’s not the end of JABS work.  As part of our commitment to continuous improvement, a wash-up meeting will be held where the competition will be reviewed and lessons learned will be considered.

As well as this, JABS will provide feedback to those unsuccessful at sift and at interview who ask for it. Depending in the size and scale of the competition it may take several weeks for this to be prepared and issued.