Batchelder practiced law in Medina, Ohio for 31 years with the law firm of Williams & Batchelder. His practice focused on personal injury defense litigation, corporate law, probate, and estate planning. Batchelder was elected to the Medina CountyCourt of Common Pleas and served briefly on that court before Governor Bob Taft appointed him to the Ninth District Ohio Court of Appeals. Batchelder was elected to the appellate bench in November 2000. He served as presiding judge from January 2000 to December 2001.
He had been selected by the Supreme Court of Ohio to serve on the Ohio Board of Bar Examiners. He was the recipient of the Ohio State Bar Public Service Award and an honorary graduate of the University of Akron School of Law. Batchelder had been a member of the Criminal Justice Advisory Board, Office of Criminal Justice Services, Ohio Court of Appeals Association and the Ohio, Akron, Lorain County, Medina County, and Wayne County Bar Associations. He served as an adjunct professor of law at the University of Akron School of Law and at the College of Urban Affairs of Cleveland State University.
Ohio House of Representatives
Batchelder served in the Ohio House of Representatives for more than 30 years, serving as chairman of the Joint Committee on Ethics and Vice-Chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee, as well as ranking member at various times on the House Judiciary Committee and House Financial Institutions Committee. From 1995 to 1998, Batchelder served as Speaker Pro Tempore of the House and Vice-Chairman of the Reference and Rules Committee.
During the Savings and Loan Crisis in the 1980s, Batchelder worked with DemocraticGovernorDick Celeste to draft legislation to save depositors' savings at stricken Savings and loan associations, causing Celeste to thank Batchelder during his State of the State speech. During the pay-to-play scandal of the mid 1990s, as chair of the Joint Committee on Ethics, Batchelder referred both the Republican President of the Ohio Senate and the Democratic Ohio Speaker of the House to a prosecutor; both were convicted. He is the only ethics committee chair ever to have referred the heads of both legislative chambers to a prosecutor.
After leaving the bench in 2005, Batchelder again was elected to the state House of Representatives in 2006, defeating Jack Schira. [1] He would be reelected in 2008. By 2009, Batchelder was serving as Minority Leader, and when Republicans retook the Ohio House in 2010, he was elected as the 101st Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives. He would remain as Speaker for the 130th Ohio General Assembly, and was term-limited in 2014.