Less than two years after Lady Hale became the first woman president of the Supreme Court, the UK's highest court has begun searching for her successor.

Baroness Hale of Richmond (Brenda Marjorie Hale), who took up her presidential post in September 2017, will retire next January. The court is also recruiting two justices to take over from Lord Carnwath and Lord Wilson, who must retire by March and May next year respectively.

The court says it wants applications from the 'widest range' of eligible candidates, 'including those who are not currently full-time judges, and particularly those who will increase the diversity of the court'.

According to the court's information pack, the president is currently paid £229,592 a year. Justices are paid £221,757 a year.

There is no lower age limit for the new recruits. However, the court says a judge who, immediately prior to their appointment, held another salaried judicial office to which they had been appointed prior to the Judicial Pensions and Retirement Act 1993 coming into force on 31 March 1995 will retain the compulsory retirement date that applied in the former office.

Applications for the Supreme Court's vacancies close at 12pm on 1 March. The government will announce the successful candidates by October.

Lady Hale, called to the bar in 1969, was appointed deputy president of the Supreme Court in June 2013. She was the first woman appointed to the court on its creation in 2009. Other firsts include the first woman to be appointed to the Law Commission and first woman law lord.

Lord Carnwath of Notting Hill (Robert John Anderson Carnwath), who was called to the bar in 1968, was appointed to the Supreme Court bench in April 2012. He was the Prince of Wales' attorney general from 1988 to 1994 and chaired the Law Commission from 1999 to 2002. As senior president of tribunals between 2007 and 2012, he was responsible for delivering major reforms to the system following the Leggatt Report.

Lord Wilson of Culworth (Nicholas Allan Roy Wilson) joined the Supreme Court in May 2011. Called to the bar in 1967, he was a High Court family judge from 1993 until 2005 and a Court of Appeal judge from 2005 until May 2011.