Oak Park magistrate launches bid for 45th District Court seat

On one level or another, attorney Richard Halprin has been preparing to be a district court judge for most of his adult life. He has practiced law for 30 years since graduating cum laude from the University of Detroit Mercy School Law in 1989, and now will seek a judgeship on the 45th District Court.

The court serves the cities of Oak Park, Huntington Woods, and Pleasant Ridge, and the Charter Township of Royal Oak.

In 1990, Halprin entered private practice and still appears almost daily in courts throughout southeast Michigan and has a wide-ranging practice, from criminal, civil, juvenile and family law, and probate litigation, to counsel on behalf of business clients.

In 2004, Halprin became one of the founding members of the Michigan Children’s Law Center, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of child abuse and neglect victims, juvenile delinquency and transgender adolescent clients in Wayne County.  To date, he has represented more than 1,000 at-risk youths throughout Metropolitan Detroit.

In 2006, Halprin was appointed magistrate of the 45th District Court in Oak Park, where he continues to preside over misdemeanor, felony, traffic and civil cases, artfully interacting with law enforcement officers, litigants, witnesses and members of the court staff, community and public at large. As magistrate, he handles criminal arraignments, bond hearings, traffic cases, search warrants, small claims trials and pretrial civil matters.  Since his appointment, he has presided over approximately 12,000 traffic and criminal cases, 400 search warrant requests, and 300 civil matters. 

Between private practice clients and magistrate duties, Richard Halprin has appeared in more than 40 Michigan courts, interacted with nearly 100 judges and handled more than 20,000 criminal, civil and family law cases in the circuit, district and probate courts of Michigan.  In total, he has either presided over or appeared as counsel in approximately 24,000 hearings since 1990.

In addition to his professional duties, Halprin sits on the boards of Oak Park Youth Assistance, the William Booth Legal Aid Clinic, and the Tri-Community Coalition, entities dedicated to protecting the most vulnerable members of our society. And when not pursuing matters directly related to the law, Halprin immerses himself in the world of fine art painting and has cultivated a following from a cross section of the community, showing his art at Metro Detroit area galleries with a portion of proceeds directed to local nonprofits.

For more information about Halprin, e-mail halprinforjudge @gmail.com or call (248) 219-9278.