by Glenn Tschimpke
Staff Writer
When Fernandina Beach attorney Robert Peters accepts the 4th Judicial Circuit’s Pro Bono Attorney of the Year award next month in Tallahassee, expect a shrugged-shoulders, “aw shucks” attitude.
“I’m surprised, to be honest with you,” said Peters, who operates a law office in downtown Fernandina Beach and was nominated by Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, Inc. “You would think there are a lot more deserving people. They’re just not being recognized, I guess. Why they singled me out, I don’t know. I didn’t think I did anything that extraordinary.”
Peters, it turns out, has been something of a go-to guy in recent years when it comes to gratis legal work. In conjunction with the Nassau County Bar Association pro bono project, over the last five years he has tendered his legal services to those needing help with the thorny details of family law.
“I used to do a lot of divorces,” he said. “We used to do a lot of family law because that’s probably the majority of what they get, either divorce or custody or that kind of thing. I was on [Legal Aid’s board of directors] for four years. When they needed something, I was the natural person they turned to.”
Over the last five years, Peters has tackled roughly 30 cases, including 16 divorces, three custody issues and two wills logging 120 off-the-clock hours.
“Robert, basically, was one of the attorneys who took the lead in setting up a Legal Aid advice clinic in Fernandina Beach in 1995,” said Sarah Jones Fowler, director of Legal Aid’s public service project. “We just wanted to honor him for doing that.”
If untangling divorce cases for pay sounds like a joyless experience to some, then doing it for free would be downright baffling. Peters points to the 1970s as his inspiration. When he was a boy, Legal Aid helped with his mother’s divorce.
“That’s probably one of the main reasons I’ve tried to make myself available to them because they helped us out a long time ago when we needed it,” he said. “It’s just kind of paying the system back.”
Peters says his general practitioner experience has been invaluable in his pro bono work where virtually any subject could present itself.
“Definitely,” he said. “The first person’s mother and father might have passed away and they didn’t get the will probated. So they need to get some real estate put out of their mother and father’s name and put into their name. That’s a real simple probate. The next person might have a custody matter. The next person might have a landlord/tenant problem. You get the whole gamut.”
While he enjoys helping with family law, Peters says he would like to focus on his current specialty, real estate and title insurance law.
At 39, he has already held a number of lofty professional titles, including communications analyst for the Air Force, certified public accountant, FBI special agent and attorney. After leaving home at 17 to join the Air Force, he returned to study accounting and real estate at Florida State University. He went to work for national accounting firm Price Waterhouse Cooper in Tampa, but the work didn’t appeal to him.
“I passed the CPA exam,” he explained. “But I hated accounting. It was just dreadful. I had to do something, so it was either building construction school or law school. I couldn’t get into building construction school, so I went to law school.”
After graduating from FSU’s law school in 1993, he joined a Fernandina Beach firm for five years before joining the FBI as a special agent. The extensive travel involved in undercover work didn’t appeal to him, so he turned to law. Since 1999, he has owned his own firm, Robert L. Peters, P.A. He currently lives in Fernandina Beach with his wife Jody and his three children, Robert, Tori and Caroline.
Each year, The Florida Bar President’s Pro Bono Service Award is given to one attorney from each of the 20 circuits who has distinguished him or herself by contributing legal services to those who cannot afford it, either by directly handling individual cases or by spearheading pro bono efforts.
Peters will receive the award March 15 from the Supreme Court of Florida in Tallahassee.