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Magistrate Esther Thomas 

Magistrate Esther Thomas was raised in Akron’s Goodyear Heights. She considers her job as a Magistrate in the Summit County Juvenile Court as a privilege and opportunity to serve the community. Upon graduating from Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, she attended Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English. After college, she worked as an advertising and marketing Account Supervisor and Media Director in Chicago, San Francisco and New York.

She earned her Juris Doctor from the University Of Cincinnati College Of Law where she served as editor of the weekly periodical, The Letter of the Law.

After graduating in 1997, she served as a law clerk at the Ohio’s First District Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. Following her clerkship, she served a Staff Attorney at the Legislative Service Commission and then as Legal Counsel for the Office of Collective Bargaining, Department of Administrative Services with the State of Ohio.

Although Magistrate Thomas had an established private practice with an emphasis on Juvenile Law, she joined the Juvenile Court in 2004 as a Training and Outreach Coordinator for the CASA/GAL Program. In 2007, she became Director of the Family Resource Center.

She was appointed Magistrate in July 2009, hearing dependency, neglect, and abuse and Legal Custody matters.

Magistrate Thomas serves on the faculty of the Ohio Supreme Court’s Guardian as Litem Education Pre-Service Committee and serves as Akron Bar Association Mentor.  She previously served as a Trustee for the 69,000 member National CASA Association, and as board member of the Akron Law Library. She is a member of the Ohio Bar Association, Ohio Magistrate Association and Akron Bar Association.

 

 
 


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