Statewide meeting tackles issues facing Florida’s local professionalism panels
Should a judge participate in a local professionalism panel’s informal, “peer-to-peer mentoring?” Should LPPs accept referrals from federal courts? How should they maintain records of a confidential process?
Those are just some questions that the chairs of Florida’s 20 local professionalism panels, or their designees, discussed Monday in a first statewide mandatory meeting.
“Right now, you’re all making something big happen that never happened before,” said former Florida Bar President Gary Lesser, a West Palm Beach attorney. “You’re making the way professionalism works in Florida better.”
The meeting was convened pursuant to a Supreme Court order, In Re: Code for Resolving Professionalism Referrals, 367 So. 3d 1184 (Fla. 2023). The order adopts many of the recommendations of a special professionalism committee that Lesser chaired in 2021.
Among other things, the order requires LPP chairs or their designees to meet at least once every other year to review the order and make recommendations for improvement, to review forms used by each circuit, and to review procedures the circuits use to maintain uniformity.
“That’s the goal, to share your procedures, what works well, what doesn’t work well,” said West Palm Beach attorney Kara Link, who serves on the Standing Committee on Professionalism, the meeting facilitator.
SCOP will compile the recommendations from Monday’s meeting for eventual presentation to the Board of Governors, possibly as early as December. The Supreme Court will make a final determination.
LPPs are separate from the Bar discipline process and designed to informally resolve complaints regarding alleged unprofessional conduct. However, under the new Supreme Court order, panels are required to report their activity every six months.
Without naming respondents, the December 2023-June 2024 reports cite behavior that ranged from being rude to a judicial assistant and soliciting clients at a local jail, to a lawyer with suspected “health and wellbeing” issues who exhibited “confusion regarding matters and cases pending before the Court, to include which party the lawyer represented.”
The latter was referred for Bar discipline, but nearly all cases were resolved informally, including one in which a lawyer self-reported for missing a hearing that resulted in a dismissal.
A 17th Circuit referral regarding a lawyer accused of “bullying” and other rude behavior prompted a recommendation to obtain free counseling via the Florida Lawyers Helpline.
Most resolutions involved an apology, meeting with LPP members and/or reviewing professionalism CLEs.
On Monday, Ft. Lauderdale attorney Jeffrey Blostein, a SCOP member, suggested that the Supreme Court might consider offering more guidance regarding a panel’s jurisdiction.
“It’s one of the first things that came up,” he said. “For example, they get a complaint on the west coast about an east coast attorney, what do they do with that?”
Other questions included whether the LPPs should resolve referrals from the federal court system (at least one LPP already has) and how the panels should maintain records of confidential process. Panels are required to report anonymously, but they must also note whether a respondent has a history of referrals.
Jodi Colton, a Boca Raton lawyer who serves on the 15th Judicial Circuit LPP, told the committee that she and her colleagues spent 50 hours drafting a local administrative order, one of the most comprehensive in the state, after the Supreme Court issued its opinion.
The 15th Circuit was concerned that the Supreme Court permits anyone to make a referral, Colton said.
“What we’ve added is that there has to be a reasonable, good-faith belief that the attorney actually acted unprofessionally,” Colton said.
The 15th Circuit LPP would appreciate more guidance on how to handle recusals or potential conflicts of interest.
“The legal community can feel pretty small,” she said.
Fifteenth Circuit Judge Carolyn Bell presented a CLE that included a history of professionalism in Florida dating back to the 1980s. Much of that history, and the integrated standard for professionalism, are available at the Center for Professionalism’s new webpage, Decorum.law, noted Director Rebecca Bandy.
Quoting cultural icons from Albert Einstein and Teddy Roosevelt to Keanu Reeves and Homer Simpson, Bell said much of practicing with professionalism involves the Golden Rule — do unto others as you would have them do unto you. She concluded with a video clip that depicted a pond of turtles swarming to upright a turtle that was flailing on its back, and at risk of drowning.
“Our mission is to remind everybody about the standards of professionalism,” she said. “We want to motivate and inspire, and ultimately, we want to be a turtle.”
