Judge Mary Jane Trapp
Mary Jane Trapp was elected to the Ohio Court of Appeals, Eleventh Appellate District in November, 2006, and served a two-year term as its Presiding/Administrative Judge in 2009 and 2010, after serving as its Administrative Judge in 2008. Judge Trapp has served as a visiting judge on the Supreme Court of Ohio and in the Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Appellate Districts.
Judge Trapp graduated from Columbus School for Girls in 1974, Mount Holyoke College, cum laude in May, 1978 and received her law degree from Case Western Reserve University in 1981. She was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1981 and was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court in 1987. Judge Trapp is the first Ohio Court of Appeals judge to have been selected by the Council of State Governments to receive a nationally prestigious Toll Fellowship in 2011. For her work in establishing pro bono foreclosure mediation programs in all five counties she serves, Judge Trapp received the President’s Award from the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation in 2011.
Judge Trapp spent over 25 years in a general civil and criminal trial and appellate practice in federal courts in Ohio and Pennsylvania and in Ohio courts at all levels. She also practiced before federal and state administrative agencies. Judge Trapp served as a mediator and as arbitrator for the Geauga and Cuyahoga County Common Pleas courts, and as a guardian ad litem for children in domestic relations court.
Judge Trapp served for six years on the Supreme Court Rules Advisory Committee and its appellate rules subcommittee, and three years as the designee of the Ohio Courts of Appeals Judges Association on the Supreme Court of Ohio Commission on the Rules of Practice and Procedure. She served as chair of the Appellate Rules Subcommittee in 2011. Chief Justice Thomas Moyer appointed Judge Trapp to serve on the eleven member Task Force to Review Ohio’s Disciplinary System. She is also a member of the Ohio Judicial Conference’s Civil Law and Procedure committee and the Board of Editors of the Ohio Jury Instructions. Judge Trapp also serves on the Ohio Judicial College’s Curriculum Planning Committee. A leader at the state and national level in issues of administration of justice and legal reform and Past President of the Ohio State Bar Association, Judge Trapp served as the OSBA delegate to the American Bar Association House of Delegates, and now serves in that deliberative body as the delegate from the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association. She is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Life Fellow of the Ohio State Bar Foundation. She is a Life Member, Judicial Conference of the Eighth Judicial District and received the 2009 Founders’ Award from the Ohio Women’s Bar Association.
Among her many other professional and bar association activities, Judge Trapp is a member of the OSBA Judicial Administration and Legal Reform Committee and has chaired that committee on two different occasions. She has also served as a member of the Supreme Court Subcommittee on Privacy and Technology, Supreme Court of Ohio Committee on Technology, appellate work group; as a Commissioner on three Supreme Court of Ohio boards of commissioners: Professionalism, the Unauthorized Practice of Law, and Continuing Legal Education; and as a member of the Supreme Court Unauthorized Practice of Law Task Force and Supreme Court Records Management Task Force. She also served as a Liaison - attorney representative to Civil Law & Procedure Committee of the Ohio Judicial Conference.
She is active in the Chagrin Valley Women’s Club and the Geauga County Agricultural Society, and in the summer, she serves as a St. Anselm Parish Festival volunteer. She has served as President of the Columbus School for Girls National Alumnae Council and on the school’s Board of Trustees. Judge Trapp is a charter member of the United Way of Lake County’s Women’s Leadership Initiative.
Judge Trapp has authored a book chapter on civil rules and trial practice, as well as lectures, on the topics of ethics and professionalism, the civil rules and rules of evidence, appellate practice, trial practice for women lawyers, nursing home negligence, living wills and durable powers of attorney for health care, the unauthorized practice of law, and judicial selection.
Judge Trapp is married to Attorney Mike Apicella and has four step-children and three step-grandchildren.