The Honorable Bertila Soto, Chief Judge of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, has appointed Mr. Alvan Balent, Jr., Esq. as General Magistrate for Probate Matters, effective July 2, 2018.

Prior to his appointment as General Magistrate, Mr. Balent served as an Assistant General Counsel for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit since September of 2013, where he worked on many areas of the law, from foreclosures to same-sex marriage, but where his primary focus was on probate and mental health law, as well as questions involving judicial ethics.

General Magistrate Balent is actively involved with the Florida Bar, where he is a member of the Constitutional Judiciary Committee and chairs the Government Lawyers Section’s bylaws and publication committees.  Further, he created and helps administer a scholarship through which the Bar’s Law School Division provides a free bar exam study course to a law student that did pro bono work while in school.  He also petitioned the Bar to create a special committee to review Florida’s mental health laws, which was established in early 2017 and co-chaired by the Honorable Steven Leifman of this Circuit.  General Magistrate Balent chairs its legislation subcommittee, and the Committee recently released seventeen proposed legislative reforms to Florida’s Baker and Marchman Acts.  He was a Class 3 member of the Bar’s Leadership Academy and has been published in several law reviews. 

General Magistrate Balent graduated from Vassar College and Florida State University College of Law, cum laude.  Prior to joining the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, he worked for Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity as an appeals referee adjudicating unemployment compensation cases.