Judges and trial lawyers to address professionalism and AI at September 11 seminar
Seventeenth Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Jack Tuter, Administrative Judge Carol-Lisa Phillips, Circuit Judge Michael Robinson, and some prominent South Florida trial lawyers will present “Professionalism Tools from the Florida Supreme Court, LPPs & Artificial Intelligence,” at the Broward County Courthouse on September 11.
Sponsored by ABOTA Fort Lauderdale, the seminar begins at noon and is free to organization members and members of the judiciary. Registration is available here.
Veteran South Florida trial attorneys Daniel Harwin, a partner with Freedland Harwin Gander Valori; Kara Rockebach Link, a founding partner with Link Rockenbach; and Mitchell Chester of Mitchell A. Chester, P.A., will join the judges on the panel.
Last summer, the Supreme Court issued In Re: Code for Resolving Professionalism Referrals and Amendments to Rule Regulating the Florida Bar 6-10.3, Case No. SC2023-0884. The ruling adopted most of the recommendations of a “Special Committee for the Review of Professionalism in Florida.” Former President Michael Tanner directed the panel to review the teaching of professionalism throughout a lawyer’s career; the content of Florida’s professionalism standards; and the enforcement of those standards.
Among other things, the order amended the 2013 “Code for Resolving Professionalism Complaints,” by “clarifying and enhancing” the role of professionalism panels, “entities that are independent of The Florida Bar and established in each circuit to for informally resolving referrals of claimed unprofessional conduct by lawyers practicing in that circuit.”
Justices wrote that they agreed with the special committee “that the informal, peer-to-peer mentoring approach offered by local professionalism panels can materially improve professionalism among Florida lawyers.”
The order amended Bar Rule 6-3.10(b)(Minimum Hourly Continuing Legal Education Requirements) by reducing the number of CLE credits that Bar members must earn every three-year reporting cycle from 33 to 30. The revisions also added a requirement that Bar members “complete, during each reporting cycle, a two-hour legal professionalism course produced by The Florida Bar and approved by this Court.”
The American Board of Trial Advocates is dedicated to the preservation of the civil jury trial. ABOTA claims its mission is to “foster improvement in the ethical and technical standards of practice in the field of advocacy to the end that individual litigants may receive more effective representation and the general public be benefitted by more efficient administration of justice consistent with time-tested and traditional principles of litigation.”
