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Judge Annalisa Williams receives OSBF Ritter Award
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: December 16, 2022
Judge Annalisa Stubbs Williams, who has been on the bench of the Akron Municipal Court since 2003, has received the Ritter Award from the Ohio State Bar Foundation.
The annual award recognizes an Ohio lawyer for the highest level of service, professionalism and accomplishment.
For Judge Williams, this award is a capstone to a full professional life of serving her community, both in the legal profession and beyond to the broader community.
For her part, Judge Williams said that she has always strived for the “highest level of professional ethics and integrity.”
She credits her parents for rearing her to work with her world in that way.
“I had great parents,” she said. “They really looked out for us. They taught us the Golden Rule.”
That carries over to her professional life.
“I try to have respect, fairness, dignity and kindness for the people I meet and the people who come in front of me,” she said.
Judge Williams’ lifetime career of service has also recently been recognized by both of her alma maters. She received the 2020 Distinguished Alumni Award from Kent State University and the 2022 Outstanding Alumni Award from Akron Law.
The Ritter Award “recognizes the accomplishments of the honoree in attaining and promoting the highest level of professionalism, integrity and ethics in the practice of law while assisting other attorneys, the courts and the public to envision and cause changes which improve the justice system in Ohio,” according to the organization’s website.
Lori Keating, executive director of the bar foundation, says, simply, that the awardee “makes the justice system better. It is our most prestigious award.”
The Ritter Award is named after George Ritter, a Toledo attorney and industrialist who started the Foundation.
The Ohio State Bar Foundation has awarded millions of dollars in grants over decades to Ohio nonprofits that serve unmet legal needs. It is the largest bar foundation in the country, according to Keating.
Awarding this honor begins with a nomination.
The award committee, composed of lawyers from around the state, meets personally with each nominee.
“They are all superstars,” said Keating. During meetings, Keating said that Judge Williams stood out from the crowd with her warmth and kindness.
“People were really moved by that,” she said.
Judge Williams, 66, has spent a lifetime in the legal system making it better by continually giving back to the legal and local community. She received a bachelor’s degree with honors in political science from Kent State University in 1977. She received a master’s degree from the University of Akron in urban studies in 1980 and her juris doctorate from The University of Akron School of Law in 1984.
Prior to her taking her seat on the bench, she served as a domestic relations referee, as an assistant law director, commissioner and chair of the Summit County Human Resources Commission and was engaged in the private practice of law.
In her years on the bench, Judge Williams has built a reputation for founding and supporting specialized dockets and court programs to help the disadvantaged and people who have a hard time with the legal system. She is a member of the Ohio Supreme Court Commission on Specialized Dockets and the Supreme Court Judicial College.
She is a founding member of the Ohio Black Judges’ Association, which she says is a tight-knit group.
“Out of 715 judges in Ohio, only 60 are people of color,” she said.
She has been the presiding judge of the Akron Municipal Mental Health Court since 2005. The court has been designated as one of five original learning sites by the Bureau of Justice and Assistance and the Council of State Governments. This designation allows other courts to learn how to operate a mental health court from the Akron Municipal Court, she said.
She presides over the Forensic Assertive Community Treatment (FACT) program and developed the Reading Advancement Program.
She also developed the award-winning Peace of Mind program, which she started in 2015. This program “provides a forum for female defendants to discuss specific life stressors, traumatic events and triggers” in which each woman has the opportunity to shine a light on how their thoughts and actions impacted their involvement in the criminal justice system. For more information on this program, please go here: https://akronmunicipalcourt.org/programs/peace-of-mind.
Judge Williams is particularly interested in the health of incoming law students and works with the Akron-Canton Barristers Association “to mentor entry-level law students to help them stay in school,” she said, including helping them figure out how to pay for school.
This association, established in 1948, is a legal organization of primarily African-American attorneys and judges in Summit and Stark Counties.
Along similar lines, she is on the board of Project GRAD Akron, a nonprofit that works with students in grades nine through 12 “who have a shot to go to (post-secondary) school,” she said, adding that she just attended their 20th anniversary celebration.
She has also been very active in the Akron Bar Association, serving as a past elected trustee and member of the municipal courts committee, among other positions. She also created the Clothes for Clients committee.
She is also a lifetime member of the NAACP and the Girl Scouts of America
Keating said that giving these kinds of awards to outstanding members of the legal community “is a good thing. There are a lot of attorneys out there doing good who are sometimes unsung heroes. They remind us of what we should all be doing. I love this event every year.”
Looking at the immediate future, Judge Williams said that “I love what I do. I will run one more time,” she said, and then she will be aged out.
But while she remains on the bench, Judge Williams will continue to be a shining star in the Akron, Ohio and national legal world.
The Ritter Award is named after George Ritter, the original founder of the Bar Foundation, according to the Foundation’s website. Ritter made his fortune by saving Toledo’s Willys-Overland company (which eventually became Jeep) from bankruptcy in 1937, helping with the company’s quick rise when it got the contract to build four-wheel drive vehicles for the Army in WWII, and then making a huge sum when the Jeep company was eventually sold. He then embarked on the life of a philanthropist.