Who wants to be a judge? Lonesome, loaded with responsibility...

Photo: SCANPIX

Name a job that pays €3,400 to €4,400 plus perks and yet lacks candidates. Judges.

For most, wages are the No 1 issue when applying for any office. Judges are a glaring exception. Today in Tallinn, they have convened to their grand convention of the year, the Suurkogu, focussing on this very issue: where do we get us new judges as a third or more are soon about to retire? We are talking about some 80 judge posts.

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Priit Pikamäe stands before his robed colleagues and holds an anxious address. Our universities having produced large amounts of jurists, but few want to become a judge. Rather, the dream job is being a prosecutor or lawyer.

Unto judges, there apply a host of restrictions while subject to high requirements. Even to keep a shoemaker’s shop is forbidden to a judge, to say nothing about the option to get a little above average tipsy publicly. Add to that the watchful eye of security police lest some stray from the path of truth and justice.

Additional holiday cut

A lure used to be the additional holiday. For judges of the first and second instance, this was 49 days and for those working in Supreme Court a whopping double the usual. But, as of this coming April, all judges will be vacationing for a total of 35 days a year. Those working as judges before July 2013 will, as they retire, be receiving additional pension of 75 percent of last salary. The newcomers will not have that either.

Mr Pikamäe says that in 2010–2014, only half of competitions for judges ended in success.  

«The rule was to firstly relate a failures finding a judge to Viru County Court, due to the peculiarity of the location; however, competitions are also flopping at Harju and Tartu County Courts,» admitted Mr Pikamäe.

Thus, last December a competition was declared to find three judges Harju County Court and one for Viru County Court, but only one person was left applying at the end. So: three vacancies out of four simply went unfilled.

Last year, Supreme Court ordered a Faktum & Ariko research to find out what jurists had against becoming a judge.

«Mostly, the reason people decide not to become a judge is not the salary,» said Mr Pikamäe. «Our first and second instance judge wages are quite competitive even with the Western-European average.»

For a bystander, extra pension for judges may seem unnecessary and indeed those assuming the job after July 2013 will no longer get the perk. Even so, the work is special in many ways. With all the talk about working while in retirement age, a judge may not be in office beyond age 68. Once sworn into office, judges traditionally do that till they retire, but after turning 68 they are simply forced to retire.

Imagine someone who has done this same job all his life long and, overnight, will have to settle for income ten times lower than before; he may not continue in the same profession and will hardly find engagement in some other field of life.

Currently, both Master’s degree university graduates and active prosecutors/lawyers may apply to become judge. University graduates, however, must pass the judicial candidate service. And all applicants need to pass the judge exam – one requiring serious preparation. Mr Pikamäe thinks judicial candidate service ought to be abolished, to be replaced with requirement of four-five years of legal practice.

The aloof risk

Should people become judges straight from university, people with little real life experience may don the robe. With no hands-on prosecutor or lawyer practice, a judge has his restrictions anyhow to come into contact with the world of the mundane.

«The more working life experience under their belt, the more likely they become good judges,» believes Mr Pikamäe. «In the USA, the rule is for people only to become judges after really long careers as lawyers – the approach differs with various countries.»

Mr Pikamäe said there are all sorts of other reasons as well for people to shrink back from becoming judges. «For many, the job obviously seems somewhat too final,» he said. The world is multicoloured and beckoning, and even in professional life people seek for more variety than a conservative-like judge job might offer.

According to Mr Pikamäe, being a judge comes with several restrictions disliked perhaps by lawyers. «Being a lawyer may be more glamorous, perhaps,» he said. «Surely the limits make the job harder to bear. It’s easier to list what a judge may do – next to doing his job, he may only engage in study and research. Business is excluded.»

Nevertheless, Mr Pikamäe thinks the requirements may in no way be lowered.

«Rather, we might make it easier for lawyers or prosecutors to apply to be judges,» he said. «Today, courts, Bar Association and Prosecutor’s Office have their own separate examination system.» Mr Pikamäe said these guilds might arrange for a harmonised examinations system so that switching from prosecutor to judge and vice versa would not need a new exam. Preparing for an exam takes a lot of time beside the daily work; also, for a well-known sworn lawyer, just the tiny thought of failure at a judge exam may feel intimidating.

Faktum & Ariko interviewed jurists. One of these was rather straightforward regarding the job of a judge: «The people working in the court system look quite different from those occupied in the private sector (incl. the large law offices). Regarding the age, the view on life, and the attitude towards work. It seems that courts are rather not a collective young, forward-looking, merry. It also seems courts have a rigid hierarchy. I prefer a youthful, innovative collective.»

Enter advocate-generals

According to justice ministry vice chancellor Marko Aavik, there is no need to fear, however, that the functioning of courts would seriously suffer due to the failed competitions.

«The judge competitions with few candidates or such as fail are an age-old plague,» he said. «The system isn’t allowing for many to apply; at the moment, it is only lawyers, sworn lawyers and prosecutors that can apply, but even they have to pass the judge’s exam,» said Mr Aavik. «In addition to that, judicial candidates may apply as well – this is an apprentice job, one of no big interest for people.»

The latter do a low-wage job, for a couple of years – with no assurance of landing the judge job after that.  

Mr Aavik said lawyers and prosecutors have never been enough to fill judge posts. Even with the good judge salaries in Estonia, the top lawyers earn far more. Mr Aavik said the state is currently of the opinion that the newly installed advocate-general job will solve the problem – during this year, all Estonian judges (a couple of hundred) will get personal advocate-generals as assistants.

«Once advocate-generals have two years of work experience, they may apply to be judges,» added Mr Aavik. «Polls say 65 percent of 115 current advocate-generals want to become judges in the future.»

But the judicial candidate service will cease to be – for the entire Estonia, there’s just two of them anyhow ...

Judge perks scaled back

• Up to April 1^st, holiday for judges of first and second instance is 49 days, for Supreme Court justices 56 days. Starting April, all judges have 35-day holidays a year.
• County and administrative court judge gross wages are €3,380.
• District court judge makes €3,900 gross.
• Supreme Court justice makes €4,420 gross.
• Judges assuming office before July 1^st 2013 will have additional pension of three quarters of last pay. Those who become judges after said date will not have that.
• Up to July 2013, judges were paid additional remuneration according to seniority. Not anymore. 

Source: Supreme Court