by Frank Angones
Florida Bar President
The Florida Bar — both its operations and its Board of Governors — has evolved over the years in pursuit of the Bar’s goals of better serving its members and the public.
First, a quick review. The board has 51 voting members, including two public, nonlawyer members, the president of the Young Lawyers Division, and the Bar’s president-elect. The Bar president presides over the meetings, but votes only in the event of a tie. Under Bar rules, the YLD president-elect sits as a nonvoting member of the board.
It is my general impression that the board has changed over the past 10 years, just as the Bar generally has changed, to include a broader spectrum of lawyers.
It wasn’t very many years ago that the board was comprised almost entirely of white males, with very few white female members. But the 2007-08 board, not counting the ex-officio members, will include 10 women, five African-Americans (that includes three African-American women), and three Hispanics. With active recruitment of minorities in recent years for Bar leadership positions, including serving on and heading Bar committees, we are hopeful for further enrichment to the Board of Governors in our efforts to diversify the Bar and adhere to the high standards required by our profession. Additionally, the presidents of the Florida Association for Women Lawyers, the Virgil Hawkins Florida Chapter of the National Bar Association, and the Cuban-American Bar Association sit as nonvoting members of the board by invitation of the president. The latter memberships underscore the increasing diversity on the board.
In order to consider the histories and opinions of these members’ on various subjects related to the practice of law, I performed a review of the biographical information of the 51 members of this Board of Governors. As you would imagine, law school educational backgrounds vary, with 24 members graduating from the University of Florida; eight from the University of Miami; four from both Stetson and Florida State universities; and one from Nova University. Other law schools represented on the board include Loyola in New Orleans, Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, St. Johns University, St. Louis University, George Washington University, Ohio Northern University, Rutgers University, and The Cumberland School of Law.
Listed as birth places are states including: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Members of the Board of Governors were born abroad in Canada, Cuba, Italy, and Jamaica as well as a number of Florida cities including Port St. Joe.
The variety of practices represented on the board may be surprising to many Bar members. It used to be a common — and false — perception that the board was made up almost entirely of “silk-stocking” civil lawyers from large firms. Final details are not in for the 2007-08 board, but it will again have a majority of members from small to mid-sized firms, with a leavening of solo practitioners and members from larger firms.
A wide variety of practice areas are also represented, including criminal defense, appellate practice, government practice, civil litigation, family law practice, employment, tax, real estate, and estate planning.
Aside from their service in local bars and availability to constituents, governors spend a great deal of time monitoring the Bar and its operations. Every other year, the Bar’s membership survey focuses on, among other things, Bar operations, their respective benefit to members, and how members think they can be improved. The board’s Program Evaluation Committee usually selects one or two Bar programs each year for an in-depth review, evaluating those operations in meeting their goals, and seeking ways to improve them.
There are also special reviews, such as the recent three-year effort headed by immediate past Bar President Hank Coxe to study the Bar’s grievance operations from top to bottom. Several changes have resulted from that study, perhaps most notably an improved intake process to separate and resolve minor client-attorney disputes. Several more recommendations are still being considered.
Such oversight work is critically important. As the state and the profession have grown, so have the challenges facing the legal profession. The Bar has worked to address those challenges, with the dual goals of helping the membership and serving the public.
The Bar’s Lawyer Regulation Division is probably the most visible Bar program. Consuming over half of the budget from annual membership fees, it is also the largest Bar program and includes the operation of the grievance system, as well as the review of lawyer ads, the popular Ethics Hotline, and the operations of the Henry Latimer Center for Professionalism. The grievance process not only assists in upholding the standards of the profession, but protects the public from unscrupulous practitioners. The Bar’s discipline operations have long been considered a model for state bars.
With a state of more than 16 million people and a Bar with more than 80,000 members, working to help lawyers pursue their profession and protecting the public is a large and complex task. Yet, it is one that your Board of Governors and Bar eagerly accept as we seek continual improvement in our profession.
I encourage you to become familiar with the members of the Board of Governors in your circuit. Get to know them and voice your opinions to them. They are your representatives on the board.
— Courtesy Florida Bar Journal