Mass Black Judge

TLDR: Getting to the bench isn’t just about passing the bar and putting in the years. Most sitting judges point to one or two people who showed them the ropes long before they ever put on a robe. Formal and informal mentorship programs are quietly doing more to diversify the judiciary than any single policy change, and the ones that work share a few common traits worth understanding.

Why Mentorship Matters More Than People Think

Ask any judge how they got appointed and you’ll rarely hear “I just applied.” There’s usually a person in the story. A supervising attorney who nominated them for a bar association committee. A retired judge who told them, flat out, “you should be doing this.” That kind of encouragement changes the math for someone who might otherwise assume the bench isn’t for people like them.

This matters because the path to a judgeship isn’t written down anywhere in full. There’s no manual that says apply here, network there, take this committee seat. It gets passed along person to person, and if you’re not already connected to that network, you’re starting several steps behind.

The Information Gap Is Real

A lot of qualified attorneys never apply for judicial openings simply because they don’t know the process exists, or they assume they’re not the “type” who gets picked. Mentors close that gap. They explain what a judicial nominating commission actually looks for, they review writing samples, they sit in on mock interviews. None of it is glamorous work, but it’s the difference between someone applying with confidence and someone not applying at all.

What Good Mentorship Programs Actually Look Like

The programs that get results tend to avoid the trap of being purely ceremonial. A once-a-year panel discussion sounds nice on a flyer, but it doesn’t build the kind of relationship that gets someone through a three-year process of committee work, networking, and eventually an application.

Instead, effective programs pair people for a real stretch of time, often a year or more, with check-ins built into the calendar rather than left to chance. Mentees get pushed toward specific opportunities: serving on a local bar committee, volunteering for pro bono work that gets noticed, sitting as a pro tem judge when the opportunity comes up.

Peer Mentorship Deserves More Credit

Vertical mentorship (a senior judge guiding a junior attorney) gets most of the attention, but peer mentorship matters just as much. Attorneys who applied for the bench around the same time, comparing notes on what worked in their interviews or what a particular commission tends to ask, often help each other more practically than a mentor two decades removed from the process.

Sponsorship Is Different From Mentorship

It’s worth separating mentorship from sponsorship, because they’re not the same thing and both matter. A mentor gives advice. A sponsor uses their own credibility to advocate for someone when they’re not in the room. Judges who actively call commission members on a mentee’s behalf, or write letters that carry real weight, are doing something a standard mentoring relationship doesn’t cover. Programs that build in a sponsorship component tend to see more of their participants actually reach the bench, not just apply for it.

Building a Pipeline Instead of a One-Time Fix

Diversifying the judiciary isn’t something that happens with a single hiring cycle or one well-intentioned appointment. It requires a pipeline, meaning law students and young associates are identified early, encouraged toward the kind of public service and bar involvement that judicial commissions look for, and kept in the loop for years before an opening even comes up.

Organizations built around judicial associations are well positioned to run this kind of long game because they already have the sitting judges, the institutional memory, and the credibility with nominating commissions. What they need is consistent funding and enough structure that mentorship doesn’t depend on which volunteers happen to show up that year.

What Aspiring Judges Should Actually Do

For attorneys who want to end up on the bench eventually, the practical advice is fairly consistent across most mentorship programs: get involved in bar association leadership early, take on pro bono cases that put your name in front of the legal community, and find at least one person willing to be honest with you about your application when the time comes, not just encouraging.

The judges shaping the next generation aren’t doing it through speeches. They’re doing it one phone call, one letter, one honest conversation at a time. That’s slow work, and it doesn’t show up in headlines, but it’s the actual mechanism behind a more representative bench.