Magisterial District Judge Benjamin Johns will host an open house in the new Upper Darby district court complex Wednesday night in an effort to connect with the community and inform the public about how the judicial system works.

“I’m doing this because I find this interesting and fun to talk about,” Johns said during a recent interview. “I mean, if you ask my family what we talk about at dinner when we have dinner together, it’s usually what I’ve done at court and what I’ve seen. So I love talking about this stuff and I hope at the end of the session that people will come out and learn about what the MDJ courts do.”

Johns, 46, was elected to District Court 32-1-34 covering parts of Upper Darby Township in 2023 and took the seat in January 2024.

“I love it,” he said of the judge role. “Just getting exposed to different types of people in the township and the government, and just meeting great people across the board. I’ve met a whole bunch of lawyers, and these are not people in my circles, what I do in my background. So getting the opportunity to meet very interesting people and to learn about local government in particular is interesting. I’m learning all kinds of things about Upper Darby — for better, for worse — but it’s a great position and I’m very lucky to have it.”

His background

Johns is a graduate of Penn State Dickinson Law — a distinction he shares with district judges Georgia Stone in Brookhaven and Gabriella Coleman of Clifton Heights — where he earned his Juris Doctorate and Master of Business Administration in 2005.

Originally from Lower Merion, Johns moved to Upper Darby about 20 years ago and has been lawyering for the last 17, mostly civil matters in class actions. He was recently named managing partner at Shub Johns & Holbrook LLP, which he co-founded.

The impetus for Wednesday’s gathering were these sort of “cheat sheets” Johns kept up with for his first two years as a judge that he would update at the end of each week.

“Over the course of that time period, I had this comprehensive outline, basically akin to when I was in law school,” he said. “For every class, you start with an outline at the beginning of the semester and then by the end of the semester, you’ve got like this comprehensive thing based on the classes and the assignments and stuff.”

Originally just a way to keep things organized and take notes, Johns thought this compendium of all things MDJ might be of some interest to others as well.

He’s even put together a 62-page slide presentation covering everything from the difference between civil cases and criminal cases to how search warrants are approved and judicial ethics.

For his part, Johns said he tries to run a courtroom where people are given the opportunity to have their voices heard in a respectful and civil manner. He might have to steer the cart back onto the rails every now and then, he said, but there is not agenda other getting to the right result.

‘A blank slate’

In nearly two decades as a lawyer, Johns said he had been in district court maybe once to get something notarized. His practice areas usually have him in federal courts, so to go from the sweeping, grand scale of the national level to the more granular, on-the-ground aspect of district court was somewhat refreshing, he said.

“I was writing, essentially, on a blank slate,” he said. “And I’ve learned a lot, as you can imagine, over close to two and a half years doing this. And so that kind of coincided also with this,” gesturing broadly to the new court building at 1500 Garrett Road, one large parking lot in Barclay Square away from the old court building at 1550 Garrett Road.

There was some publicity about the move to the new facilities that Johns shares with Harry Karapalides (32-1-33) and Christopher Mattox (32-2-51), so he thought he would try to build on that with a little community outreach to keep the populace informed about exactly what district courts do and how they fit into the larger scheme of the justice system.

This will be Johns’ second bite of the apple with the slide presentation, which he recently tried out on high-schoolers at Monsignor Bonner and Upper Darby High School. It apparently went over well – one kid told him he was wants to grow up to be a judge.

“The target audience here is the community, the public, and I’m just going to talk about what we do here, and what MDJs do, and the system, and the kind of cases that I see, and the things we do and the things we don’t do,” he said. “I’m hoping it’s going to be well attended. I’ve invited pretty much everybody I know, so we’ll see. I think it’s going to be a fun event.”

The open house begins at 7 p.m. April 8 at 1500 Garrett Road in Upper Darby, around the corner from the Sav-A-Lot on the Garrett-facing side of the building.