by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
Attention young lawyers: whatever you do, don’t bribe the judge with Florida-Florida State tickets.
That is just one of the things a group of young and aspiring attorneys learned last week at an entertaining, yet informative, free seminar on professionalism and civility in the courtroom.
The seminar, which was hosted by Florida Coastal School of Law and sponsored by the Jacksonville chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates, was held to teach law students and young lawyers how to avoid some of the common courtroom etiquette mistakes often made by green attorneys.
The seminar featured a mock chambers hearing in which everything that could go wrong went wrong as well as comments by State Attorney Harry Shorstein and Circuit Court Judges McRae Mathis and Waddell Wallace. Also helping with the presentation were ABOTA chapter president Jeptha Barbour, Pajcic & Pajcic attorney Tad Griffin and Mary Bland Love of Gobelman and Love.
Besides telling attendees about common faux pas to avoid, the presenters seemed to be pushing an overall message that respect in the courtroom is a fading courtesy among new law school graduates.
“There is a degeneration of professionalism and civility in the courtroom today,” said Shorstein. “I think I see the reasons for it, none of which are acceptable.”
Shorstein said the advancing number of lawyers entering the legal profession today might be one of the reasons. A few decades ago, there were fewer lawyers and everyone seemed to know each another, he said. Because they knew each other on a friendly basis, the attorneys acted more civil to one another, even when things got heated in the courtroom. Now, he said there are too many lawyers out there for the same level of professional camaraderie to exist.
After the presentations, Stacey Watson May, chair of the Jacksonville Bar Mentor Program, talked to the group about the advantages of obtaining a mentor after leaving law school.