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Eve Belfance named city’s new law director
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: February 2, 2016
Eve Belfance said her recent appointment as Akron law director by new Akron mayor Daniel Horrigan caught her a little bit by surprise.
The former Akron Municipal Court and 9th District Court of Appeals judge had lost her bid for re-election to the appellate bench and had just embarked on repositioning her her law practice to place more emphasis on mediation when the mayor called.
As that business was just getting off the ground she said, “I got a call from Dan Horrigan.”
From Horrigan’s perspective, the appointment grew directly out of Belfance’s years on the bench.
“Eve's experience, education and dedication to public service make her an ideal fit to be city's top legal authority,” said Horrigan. “Her long service to the courts and the legal profession are an exemplary model to my vision of service first and servant leadership.”
That resume of public service coupled with her inborn organizational ability made Horrigan’s decision an easy one, he said.
“Her strong leadership skills along with her commitment to service and education are clearly highlighted throughout her judicial career,” said Horrigan. “Eve played a central role in the development of the DUI court, one of the first of its kind in Ohio. She also authored over 500 opinions as a 9th District Court of Appeals judge and has worked on numerous statewide judicial committees including serving on the Ohio Supreme Court Judicial College Appellate Curriculum Committee, which designed the first comprehensive appellate curriculum for judges.”
As she takes her office, she said her basic approach to leading the office, which has a staff of about 15 attorneys along with numerous support staff, is “a broader mission of service about self and professional excellence. Those two core values will be the fundamental building blocks of the culture here.”
Belfance said that she is ready to start by familiarizing herself with “everything that is going on in the office.” Her first step, she said, will be “to evaluate all of the current practice and management structures that are in place now, and see if they comport with the best practices for the office.”
To do that, Belfance said that a part of the early evaluation process will be for her to determine if the “administrative and legal staff have the support that they need to provide (those two building blocks) and how I can support them to be great?”
The kind of servant leadership that Belfance describes gave her a strong commonality of vision with Horrigan she said.
“We really haven’t had very much time to talk since I accepted the position,” she said. “We’re both extremely busy right now. But Dan talked about his philosophy of servant leadership when he first called me and that is what really intrigued me about the job. We are of the same mind, on the same page, about that. In the big picture this office exists for the public.”
Belfance said that her many years of experience as a judge gives her a unique perspective toward her new position.
“Being a judge for a long time is a very helpful experience,” she said. “Even right off the bat, I can see how one case can expand into other areas of the law when there is a particular issue that I know something about. From the appellate perspective, I can examine the litigation pathways through the length of potential appellate issues, including preserving the record, and so on. I won’t take positions not supported by the law.”
Her judicial view will also allow her to take “a balanced view of the issues,” she said. “The judicial view is about fairness. I have a good sense of what a court would be looking for and what is fair.”
She said her background in conflict resolution is also a benefit.
“I can take those skills and apply them here,” she said, both internally within the office itself, and externally.
She says her approach to internal office dynamics can be summed up in one word: teamwork.
“I’m a straight shooter. I want to develop a team culture, a caring culture in the office,” said Belfance. “This is one of the main goals I have walking in. I want to make sure that the staff are committed to the mission of servant leadership, and professional excellence.”
Belfance said she expects the staff to be able to go through a process of “self-assessment and improvement. Anyone can make a mistake, of course, but are you learning from that? What can you gain from that mistake in order to improve?”
She said she expects the staff to “engage in that sort of self-assessment all of the time.”
At the same time, the team culture that Belfance wants to build is based upon “caring about the public, and also caring about one another. We all need to support each other, to ask each other: ‘what can I do to help get that job done?’”
But first things first, she said. She will need to familiarize herself with every case, civil and criminal, to evaluate each situation. She said that she is getting tremendous help from her predecessor, Patricia Ambrose Rubright, who is still on staff and other people who are familiar with how the office operates.
Belfance said she is looking forward to her new position with a great deal of enthusiasm.
“I am always up for a new challenge,” she said.