The Virginia State Bar (VSB) Judicial Candidate Evaluation Committee (JCEC or Committee) consists of fifteen active lawyer members, one from each of the bar’s ten disciplinary districts and five from the state at large, elected to staggered three-year terms. Committee members are not eligible to serve a second consecutive three-year term, but former members may serve as members pro tempore. The VSB’s Executive Committee shall assign a representative to serve as a liaison to the JCEC as a non-voting member. The chair is selected by the Committee each year.

In instances where one or more currently serving members of the Committee are not available to participate in the process of developing and making recommendations for a particular judicial vacancy, the chair of the Committee may appoint, as members pro tempore, a like number of past members of the Committee who are willing and able to serve during the process of developing and making recommendations for that judicial vacancy.

1. Experience: A candidate for judicial office should be a member of the Virginia State Bar and have been engaged in the practice or teaching of law, public interest law, or service in the judicial system. Substantial courtroom and trial experience (as a lawyer or a trial judge) is important for nominees to both the appellate and the trial courts. Additional experience that is similar to in-court trial work — such as appearing before or serving on administrative agencies or arbitration boards, or teaching trial advocacy or other clinical law school courses — is considered by the Committee in evaluating a nominee's trial experience. Significant evidence of distinguished accomplishment in the field of law may compensate for a nominee's lack of substantial courtroom experience. Recognizing that an appellate judge deals primarily with records, briefs, appellate advocates and colleagues, the Committee may place somewhat more emphasis on the importance of scholarship and the ability to write lucidly and persuasively, to harmonize a body of law and to give guidance to the trial courts for future cases in the evaluation of nominees for appellate courts.
2. Integrity: The candidate should be of high moral character and enjoy a general reputation in the community for honesty, industry, and diligence.
3. Professional competence: Professional competence includes intellectual capacity, professional and personal judgment, writing and analytical ability, knowledge of the law and a breadth of professional experience, including courtroom and trial experience.
4. Temperament: Judicial temperament includes a commitment to equal justice under law, freedom from bias, ability to decide issues according to law, courtesy and civility, open-mindedness, and compassion.
5. Service to the law and contribution to the effective administration of justice: Factors in this category include professionalism and a commitment to improving the availability of providing justice to all. The Committee considers that civic activities and public service are valuable experiences, but that such activity and service are not a substitute for significant experience in the practice of law, whether that experience be in the private or public sector.
6. Communication skills: Communication skills include the ability to write and speak lucidly and persuasively; to present a question, a response, an order, a ruling, a decision, and a judgment, such that it can be understood not only by the lawyers but the parties to the litigation and by the public as well. The communications should give guidance to the trial courts, the members of the bar and the public for future cases.

1. Any candidate who fails to receive an affirmative vote from a simple majority of those voting shall not be reported by the Committee.
2. All candidates who receive an affirmative vote from a simple majority of those voting shall be deemed and reported as “Qualified.” The Committee shall thereafter conduct a second vote to determine, by simple majority of those voting, whether any of the candidates deemed qualified possesses a level of qualification and distinction sufficient to merit the designation “Highly Qualified.”
3. At the conclusion of the Committee’s deliberations and voting, the Committee shall prepare an executive summary of the Committee’s reasons for its actions with respect to each candidate being designated as either “Qualified” or “Highly Qualified.” The vote count for each candidate’s evaluation of “Qualified” or “Highly Qualified” shall be included in the executive summary of each candidate.