LO
Judge / magistrate — skills, knowledge and links
Where this job sits in the official classifications, what those classifications say it demands, and what it connects to. Every block names its source: our own judgements, the U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET, or the U.S. Department of Education.
How it connects#
O*NET also lists (no page here yet): Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers · Judicial Law Clerks · Arbitrators, Mediators, and Conciliators · Probation Officers and Correctional Treatment Specialists · Equal Opportunity Representatives and Officers · Detectives and Criminal Investigators · Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement Teachers, Postsecondary · Law Teachers, Postsecondary
In the official classification#
Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates
Fit with this page: same job
Job Zone 5: extensive preparation
See it on O*NET OnLine ↗In Europe, internationally and in Singapore
Judges
Fit with this page: broader than this page
Judge
Fit with this page: same job
What O*NET rates highest#
From O*NET 23-1023.00 (Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates). Ordered by O*NET's importance rating; the words are O*NET's own scale anchors.
Transferable skills
- Judgment and Decision MakingVery important
- Complex Problem SolvingVery important
- Social PerceptivenessVery important
- Time ManagementImportant
- NegotiationImportant
- CoordinationImportant
- PersuasionImportant
- InstructingImportant
Knowledge
- Law and GovernmentExtremely important
- English LanguageExtremely important
- Administration and ManagementVery important
- PsychologyImportant
- Customer and Personal ServiceImportant
- Public Safety and SecurityImportant
Work activities
- Making Decisions and Solving ProblemsExtremely important
- Getting InformationExtremely important
- Performing for or Working Directly with the PublicExtremely important
- Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with StandardsExtremely important
- Processing InformationVery important
- Updating and Using Relevant KnowledgeVery important
Abilities
- Oral ComprehensionExtremely important
- Deductive ReasoningExtremely important
- Written ComprehensionVery important
- Oral ExpressionVery important
- Inductive ReasoningVery important
- Written ExpressionVery important
Essential skills
- Active ListeningExtremely important
- Critical ThinkingExtremely important
- Reading ComprehensionVery important
- WritingVery important
- SpeakingVery important
Each task in O*NET's terms#
O*NET describes work as detailed activities. Each of this page's 5 tasks is matched only against the activities O*NET lists for this occupation, with a stated fit; 4 match at least one. 1 are not in O*NET's list for this occupation. The alignment and its fit are this site's judgement, made task by task by its AI agent (Claude) on 2026-09-26; O*NET does not align tasks like ours. The activity names are O*NET's, the translations ours.
- Hearing cases and running proceedingsDirect courtroom activities or procedures.the closest O*NET has, not the same · Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates · O*NET 31.0Conduct hearings to investigate legal issues.covers part of this task · Getting Information · O*NET 31.0
- Researching the lawResearch relevant legal materials to aid decision making.the closest O*NET has, not the same · Getting Information · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Paralegal · LawyerIdentify implications for cases from legal precedents or other legal information.covers part of this task · Analyzing Data or Information · O*NET 31.0
- Drafting judgments and ordersPrepare written decisions for legal proceedings.the closest O*NET has, not the same · Documenting/Recording Information · O*NET 31.0
- Deciding the caseMake decisions in legal cases.the closest O*NET has, not the same · Making Decisions and Solving Problems · O*NET 31.0
- Case management and administrationNone of the activities O*NET lists for this occupation covers this task.
Tasks O*NET proposes to add#
O*NET's analysts propose new or reworded task statements for future data collection, drawing on what surveyed workers write in, research into new technologies and professional associations. They are candidates, not yet part of the rated task list, and they say nothing about whether automation is involved. This site does not fold them into its own task judgements.
- Issue search or arrest warrants.Revised wording of an existing task · 2020-08 · reported by surveyed workers · O*NET 31.0
Rules that bind this work#
Laws, regulations, court rules, regulators' guidance and collective agreements that this page's verified records read — each with the verb that matters and whom it binds. Read from each record by this site's AI agent (Claude) on 2026-09-26. Official names stay in their own language.
最高人民法院关于规范和加强人工智能司法应用的意见
第5条 · must not · binds public bodies · requires a person to do, decide or answer for it → Deciding the case
第8条、第9条 · may · binds public bodies → Drafting judgments and orders · Case management and administration
2022-12-09 · the record →Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (Artificial Intelligence Act)
Annex III point 8(a); Article 113 · defines · binds an organisation (employer, deployer, operator) → Deciding the case · Researching the law
2024-08-01 · the record →California Rules of Court, rule 10.430
(b) · must · binds public bodies → Case management and administration
2025-09-01 · the record →Artificial Intelligence (AI) Guidance for Judicial Office Holders
Take responsibility · must · binds a person (licensed or not) · requires a person to do, decide or answer for it → Hearing cases and running proceedings · Drafting judgments and orders
Legal research · should — best efforts or an expectation, not a hard duty · binds a person (licensed or not) · requires a person to do, decide or answer for it → Researching the law
2025-10-31 · the record →Our task judgements#
O*NET says what this job demands. It does not say what automation is doing to it — that is what this site's 5 task judgements are for: 5 backed by a verified event, 0 platform inference. VOLO judgement
Sources and rules#
- Each block says where it comes from: this site's own judgements, O*NET, the U.S. Department of Education's CIP–SOC crosswalk, the European ESCO classification and its official crosswalk to O*NET, the ILO's ISCO-08, Singapore's SSOC 2024, or something computed mechanically from those. Nothing on this page is a rating we made up.
- O*NET's importance ratings are used only to order and shorten the lists. They are never combined with this site's impact index or evidence counts.
- The fit between our page and an O*NET occupation is our judgement and is stated per code: same job, broader, part of it, or only the closest there is.
- The ESCO and ISCO-08 fits are derived mechanically from the official ESCO–O*NET crosswalk; where we override it, we say why in our data (for example, the crosswalk pairs radiologists with radiographers, which is a different job). The SSOC 2024 fit is our reading of the Singapore Department of Statistics' own titles and definitions. Official names are shown as their publishers write them; we do not translate them.
- Each task is matched only against the detailed work activities O*NET lists for the codes this page maps to. Where nothing fits, the page says why instead of forcing a match: work O*NET does not describe yet (used only for tasks we judge to be emerging), or nothing in O*NET's list for this occupation. An alignment never changes a task's direction, its basis or the impact index.
- Rules are read only from this site's verified records. A rule's official name must appear word for word in a record that reads it, so no name is made up; a policy mandate is read only as 'must', 'must not' or 'funds', because 'should' and 'in principle' are not a mandate. Reading a rule never changes a task's direction, its basis or the impact index.
- How these pieces fit together — objects, links and the actions that change them — is drawn as one diagram: The VOLO ontology
- ESCO (European Commission), occupation records from the ESCO API; CC BY 4.0. ESCO–O*NET crosswalk, ESCO Secretariat with the U.S. Department of Labor/ETA, version 1 (Sep 2022), O*NET-SOC 2019 ↔ ESCO v1.1.0; CC BY 4.0. Singapore Department of Statistics, Singapore Standard Occupational Classification 2024 and its correspondence with ISCO-08.
- O*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026 release, U.S. Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration, CC BY 4.0. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. The translations of O*NET descriptors on this page are ours, not O*NET's.