by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Attorney Chad Roberts remembers his introduction to the proverbial smoke-filled back rooms of Florida’s power brokers.
Working as a speech writer for Talbot D’ Alemberte, then dean of the Florida State Law School, Roberts witnessed a sit down meeting among his boss, Lawton Chiles, then Florida’s governor, former governor LeRoy Collins and Chesterfield Smith, then the head of Holland & Knight and still one of Florida’s most respected attorneys.
That these political and legal heavyweights were meeting behind closed doors didn’t surprise Roberts, but the purpose of their plotting did.
“Here are some of the most prominent names in the history of the state, all at the absolute zenith of their influence. And they were scheming to get more legal help to the poor,” said Roberts.
That image stayed with Roberts through his final year of law school at FSU and through his early years of practice.The impression was evidently a strong one. Fourteen years later the Florida Bar has chosen Roberts to receive the 2005 Florida Bar President’s Pro Bono Service Award from the Fourth Judicial Circuit.
Roberts, now a partner at Spohrer, Wilner, Maxwell and Matthews, estimates that he’s worked more than 2,000 hours pro bono over the last four years. That’s about a year’s worth of 40-hour workweeks.
When he’s on the clock, Roberts devotes most of his time to aviation law. He’s board certified in the area. His pro bono work has included advocacy for the mentally ill, military families and prisoners.
Roberts has a simple standard for his pro bono work. The greater the injustice, the greater the chance he’ll take the case. He’s currently working on behalf of several prisoners who say they were abused in the Duval County Jail.
“I tend to take cases where there’s just no one else to raise hell about it,” said Roberts.
It’s an approach instilled in him during his early work as an associate at Holland & Knight. Once again Chesterfield Smith led by example. The firm allowed Roberts to count pro bono work toward his billable hours. Without the allowance, the billable hours quota would have prevented him from doing pro bono work, as it does for many young lawyers at big firms, said Roberts.
“At Holland & Knight there was a real commitment to public service. It wasn’t fake saving a bag of puppies and send out a press release kind of thing. They committed real resources to it,” he said.
The commitment continued at Spohrer Wilner, where Roberts said he couldn’t have won the Bar Association award without his partners and associates pitching in to help relieve his billable workload.
It’s unfortunate that more young attorneys don’t find the time to work pro bono, said Roberts. It’s a chance for associates to step out of the role of “bag toter” for the partners and feel the “weight of a client’s burden on your shoulder,” he said.
“You know that the buck stops with you,” he said. “There’s nobody else lying awake at night worrying about it.”
Of about 4,000 attorneys in the Jacksonville area, about 10 percent commit time or money to pro bono work, according to Michael Figgins, executive director for Jacksonville Area Legal Aid. The organization coordinates most of the available pro bono work in Jacksonville.
Figgins hopes more attorneys follow Roberts’ example. When other lawyers see Roberts honored at a special Florida Supreme Court ceremony, Figgins hopes they feel inspiration and even a touch of envy.
“That’s the key to this competition, is to reward and recognize the people who make the commitment,” said Figgins