In New York, many people are surprised to learn that justices are not required to be lawyers. In fact, more than 1,000 of the nearly 1,800 justices who preside over the state’s 1,200 town and village courts are “lay” justices and have only minimal legal training.
The lack of extensive training and formal instruction can have a detrimental effect when a town or village justice must handle complex proceedings, which include arraignments, bail and pre-trial hearings, jury and non-jury trials, and rulings on the admissibility of evidence. And at its most extreme, a lack of understanding of the law could make the difference between a jail sentence and freedom.
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