Judgments Clerk

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom

City of Westminster

On-Site

Expires: Expiring in less than 2 weeks

Legal

Full time

£27,341 - £34,577 per year

Job summary

The Supreme Court is the United Kingdom’s highest court of appeal. It hears appeals on arguable points of law of general public importance, concentrating on cases of the greatest significance. The UKSC is the final court of appeal for all United Kingdom civil cases, and criminal cases from England, Wales and Northern Ireland and (in certain cases) Scotland. The Court plays an important role in the development of UK law. The impact of UKSC decisions extends far beyond the parties involved in any given case, helping to shape our society. Its judgments directly affect everyday lives. At the end of 2024, the Court implemented the CRM software and websites that were developed as part of a wide-ranging Change Programme. The Change Programme focused on our people, culture, and processes, by putting user needs at the heart of everything we do. Technology and online services are the enabler for building an excellent customer journey, delivering online services that our users rightly expect and need. This has greatly improved our efficiency and effectiveness and we will continue to build on the flexibility and resilience of our workforce providing them with the skills and tools that they need to deliver excellence as part of the Skilled Civil Service. The Change Programme is also about transparency and outreach, so that we can serve the public by ensuring that our work is visible, accessible, and trusted.

The Judgments Clerk reports to the Costs and Judgments Officer. This role also involves working closely with the Justices and the Registry team to ensure that all judgments of the UKSC and the JCPC are handled efficiently, in a timely manner, and with accuracy.

Job description

Purpose of the role:

To co-ordinate the production of judgments, press summaries and court orders for the UKSC and JCPC.
To provide accurate and reliable data reports for Justices and other colleagues.
To engage with the launch of the new case management system and website Portal and to improve processes as new ways of working are developed.
To assist flexibly with administrative duties in the Registry team.

Key responsibilities:

Judgments

Formatting and editing UKSC and JCPC draft judgments to a high degree of accuracy in accordance with the house-style, using the bespoke template. Rapid and confident familiarity with and ownership of the template software will be required, as will ability to assist Justices with template needs.
Fixing hand-down dates, planning the judgment hand-down schedule, and ensuring all stakeholders are kept informed, including summer vacation planning.
Cross-referencing and formatting final draft judgments to a high degree of accuracy before circulating to legal teams.
Circulating judgments to legal teams, the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting (ICLR), and Justices, ensuring that embargo terms, correction deadlines, and hand-down schedules are clearly communicated and adhered to. Ensuring press summaries are prepared according to appropriate deadlines.
Maintaining a strong working relationship with the ICLR and acting as a key liaison to coordinate judgment proofreading.
Managing the correction process by issuing corrections to Justices with clear deadlines, ensuring all amendments are finalised in time for hand-down.
Finalising judgments and applying the required metadata to judgments and press summaries, preparing them for publication.
Co-ordinating court hand-downs: fixing panels of Justices, preparing papers, and liaising with parties and internal stakeholders about broadcasting and other arrangements.
Commissioning the drafting of orders reflecting the judgments to be drafted by the parties.
Coordinating and implementing the use of new technology and process improvements.

Data

Ensuring timely and accurate entry of judgment data on the case management system.
Preparing accurate and informative data reports for CEO and management team covering range of Registry data areas.
Monitoring the robustness, utility and accuracy of statistical reports.

Judicial and Court Support

Showing flexibility to assess different priorities each day depending on the needs of the Justices.
Continually developing knowledge and processes to support the Court’s objective to be a world-leading Court.

Person specification

The successful candidate will ideally have knowledge, skills and experience in:

Essential

Excellent written and oral communication skills
Strong ICT skills and full competence in use of the Microsoft Office suite (in particular Outlook, SharePoint, Excel and Word), mobile technology and databases
Good literacy and numeracy skills, with the ability to produce clear, well-presented, concise reports
Able to prioritise tasks and plan ahead
Excellent attention to detail
Tact, diplomacy and discretion

Desirable

Knowledge of the UK Courts (or JCPC Courts) and the legal profession
Knowledge of the relevant rules and practice directions
Experience of proofreading
Experience of working with a diverse range of people

Behaviours

We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:

Seeing the Big Picture
Changing and Improving
Working Together
Managing a Quality Service
Delivering at Pace

Benefits

Alongside your salary of £27,341, The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom contributes £7,920 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides (opens in a new window).

Learning and development tailored to your role
An environment with flexible working options
A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity
A Civil Service pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
Generous annual leave of 23 days leave rising to 25 days after 1 year and 30 days after 5 years’ service plus 9 ½ Public and Privilege days per year (pro rata for job-share or part-time appointments).
On-site café and discounts for staff.
Corporate membership to Benenden Health.
EdenRed employee benefits scheme.
Cycle to work scheme.
Seasonal ticket loan.
Ability to buy or sell up to 5 days of annual leave each year.
Annual eyecare voucher.
Learning and development tailored to your role.
A culture encouraging diversity and inclusion.
Reward voucher scheme.

Things you need to know

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to support your application, however, all examples and statements provided must be truthful, factually accurate and taken directly from your own experience. Where plagiarism has been identified (presenting the ideas and experiences of others, or generated by artificial intelligence, as your own) applications may be withdrawn and internal candidates may be subject to disciplinary action. Please see our candidate guidance (opens in a new window) for more information on appropriate and inappropriate use.

Selection process details

This vacancy is using Success Profiles (opens in a new window), and will assess your Behaviours.

Application process:

Interview to assess required behaviours and skills.

Application via CV and supporting statement of not more than 1000 words addressing the essential criteria and the following Civil Service Behaviours:

Changing and Improving
Delivering at Pace
Working Together
Managing a Quality Service
Delivering at Pace

Please send your application to registryrecruitment@supremecourt.uk

Please ensure your supporting statement covers why you wish to apply and the relevance of your experience/education addressing the above Success Profile behaviours and essential criteria.

If there are a large number of applicants, the panel will sift on the lead behaviour, which will be Managing a Quality Service.

Closing date:

23:59 on 7 September 2026

Reasonable Adjustments

We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible to all. Please provide details of any reasonable adjustment to our recruitment process that you may need. If you have a disability or long-term condition (a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long term effect on your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities, we have a duty to make reasonable changes to our processes.

If you need a change to be made so that you can make your application, you should: Contact our HR Team via recruitment@supremecourt.uk as soon as possible before the closing date to discuss your needs and tell us what changes or help you might need further on in the recruitment process. For instance, you may need wheelchair access at interview, or if you’re deaf, a Language Service Professional.

Inclusion and Accessibility

We are proud to be an inclusive, equal opportunities employer and Disability Confident Committed we are committed to ensuring that all candidates are treated fairly throughout the recruitment process.

In order to monitor the effectiveness of the UK Supreme Court’s Diversity & Inclusion strategy, the UKSC require certain personal details about you on submission of your application. Please note that this will be treated in confidence and will not impact your application. You will be asked to complete a D&I survey asking for permission to share this data with the UKSC HR Team to be used for statistical/monitoring purposes only, refusal of consent to share the information will not impact your application.

If you are experiencing accessibility problems with any attachments on this advert, please contact registryrecruitment@supremecourt.uk

Baseline Personnel Security Standard checks

All successful applicants will be subject to a Counter Terrorism Check (CTC) and other relevant security checks before starting.

Feedback will only be provided if you attend an interview or assessment.

Security

Successful candidates must meet the security requirements before they can be appointed. The level of security needed is counter-terrorist check (opens in a new window).

See our vetting charter (opens in a new window).People working with government assets must complete baseline personnel security standard (opens in new window) checks.

Nationality requirements

This job is broadly open to the following groups:

UK nationals
nationals of the Republic of Ireland
nationals of Commonwealth countries who have the right to work in the UK
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities with settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS) (opens in a new window)
nationals of the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein and family members of those nationalities who have made a valid application for settled or pre-settled status under the European Union Settlement Scheme (EUSS)
individuals with limited leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain who were eligible to apply for EUSS on or before 31 December 2020
Turkish nationals, and certain family members of Turkish nationals, who have accrued the right to work in the Civil Service

Further information on nationality requirements (opens in a new window)

Working for the Civil Service

The Civil Service Code (opens in a new window) sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants.

We recruit by merit on the basis of fair and open competition, as outlined in the Civil Service Commission's recruitment principles (opens in a new window).The Civil Service embraces diversity and promotes equal opportunities. As such, we run a Disability Confident Scheme (DCS) for candidates with disabilities who meet the minimum selection criteria.

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see theCivil Service People Plan (opens in a new window) and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy (opens in a new window).

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Salary range

£27,341 - £34,577 per year