The Florida Bar — the year in numbers
As The Florida Bar begins a new year, a review of its accomplishments over the past fiscal year highlights significant strides in member engagement, professional development, and legal regulation.
With over 112,000 members and notable increases in digital reach and continuing legal education market share, the Bar is making substantial progress in enhancing its services and maintaining high standards of professionalism within the legal community.
Below is a glance at what was accomplished over the past year.
As of August 1, there were 112,188 members of The Florida Bar; 97,426 are in good standing, and 94,348 are eligible to practice.
The Bar’s website generated more than 25 million page views from April 2023 to April 2024 and the Bar’s social media platforms produced more than 12.5 million impressions, including:
- Facebook: 2,059,752 post impressions, 159,753 page engagements, 3.6% post engagement rate
- Twitter/X: 1,065,183 impressions, 19,347 post engagements, 2.05% post engagement rate
- Instagram: 334,688 post impressions, 15,389 post engagements, 4.99% post engagement rate
- LinkedIn: 917,387 impressions, 13,858 engagements, 4.58% post engagement rate
The Florida Bar Journal & News continues to be highly valued by the membership with 89% of the respondents to the latest Membership Opinion Survey rating The Florida Bar News as a desirable/highly desirable Bar program and 86% rating the Journal at that same level.
The membership also rated The Florida Bar Journal & News as their premier destination for accessing “professional and legal-related media content,” with a 65% rating, topping all other legal publications/journals, webinars and online courses, commercial legal databases, online legal forums and communities, law school resources, and podcasts, among other sources.
Lawyer Regulation
The Bar’s Lawyer Regulation Department reported more than 13,363 requests for assistance in 2023-24 and opened 3,659 files that resulted in 235 cases.
The Supreme Court issued 163 disciplinary orders that disbarred 18 Florida lawyers (two permanent) and accepted 24 petitions for Disciplinary Revocations (three permanent), which is tantamount to disbarment. Disbarred lawyers may not reapply for admission for at minimum five years. They are required to go through an extensive process that includes a rigorous background check and retaking the bar exam.
The year also saw 80 suspensions (including 37 rehabilitative suspensions; 25 public reprimands; 22 admonishments; 41 final hearings; and 16 appeals).
One hundred and thirty-one members were ordered to diversion programs; 197 cases were sent to fee arbitrations; and 53 were settled through grievance mediations.
As of April 15, the Clients’ Security Fund received 140 claims against 68 lawyers and approved 62 claims with approved losses of $1,034,384. Since inception, the fund has processed 13,831 claims and paid out $51 million dollars to victims.
Programs
The Bar’s Programs Division reports another year-over-year increase in section membership numbers. There were 50,100 total section memberships in 2023-24, an increase of 0.18% over the prior fiscal year. The past four years have seen 1.3%, 1.6%, 0.3%, and 0.18% year-over-year incremental increases, respectively. Since the 2020-2021 fiscal year, section memberships have increased approximately 2.1%.
The Florida Bar’s CLE market share continues to be strong compared to all other CLE providers. Current Florida Bar CLE market share is 39.2%, which is up more than one-half a percentage point over last year’s market share of 38.6%. The Bar’s CLE market share has increased more than 5% over the past six years, increasing from 33.79% in 2019 to 39.2% today.
The total number of CLE hours reported by Bar members that make up the Bar’s 39.2% market share is 318,275 CLE hours. The next closest competitor for market share is at approximately 6.5% market share, but there are several hundred CLE providers.
BLSE
The Legal Specialization & Education Department consistently maintained a less than one-week turnaround for CLE mail and CLE course approvals. Staff posted more than 40,000 credits received through CLEMail and Bar members posted more than 320,000 credits. LSE staff received, reviewed, and approved more than 16,500 accreditation applications from more than 1,200 CLE providers.
In 2024, 343 of 362 applicants were permitted to sit for board certification exams (94%); 268 of 293 opted to test remotely (91%); 82% of members due to recertify in 2023 submitted their recertifications; and more than 1,100 initial and recertification applications were processed by staff.
There are currently 4,892 board certified lawyers in Florida holding a total of 5,129 board certification certificates.
LegalFuel
The LegalFuel website generated more than 640,000 page views from July 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024. During that same period, the LegalFuel YouTube channel had more than 65,000 views of LegalFuel CLE programs with more than 32,000 hours of CLE videos watched. LegalFuel.com added 13 new CLE courses from July 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024. The LegalFuel.com Free CLE page has had 133,000 page views in the past nine months, and LegalFuel staff have received compliments from Bar members on the availability of complimentary CLE programming.
The LegalFuel team continues to record and launch new law practice management and law practice technology podcasts monthly. There were over 65,000 downloads from July 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024.
Ethics
The Bar’s Ethics Hotline fielded some 20,000 calls this past year and the Ethics and Advertising staff reviewed nearly 3,000 lawyer advertisements. The staff also participated in 17 CLE presentations.
The Bar’s UPL Department obtained “thousands of dollars” in restitution for UPL victims and worked with the Communications Department to provide messaging to target audiences about how to not become a victim of the unlicensed practice of law.
The Bar’s General Counsel’s Office closed 1,336 public records requests and subpoenas (a decrease of 4% since last year); the average time to close requests is 8.43 days (an improvement of 3.1% since last year).
Professionalism
In FY 2023-24, the Center for Professionalism filmed, produced, and developed the curriculum for the new mandatory Professionalism CLE. The Standing Committee on Mentoring launched the Counsel to Counsel mentoring app and the center continued to work with the Young Lawyers Division to promote and produce curriculum for Decorum.law, providing professionalism and ethics educational materials for Bar members and law students.
The center also produced and released seven new episodes of the “Never Contemplated” podcast, each worth CLE professionalism credit.
The center, supported by the Standing Committee on Professionalism and the Student Education and Admission to the Bar Committee, has hosted approximately 10 CLE webinars on professionalism, mentoring, pathways to the bench, client-centered practice, career transitions, avoiding burnout, and gender empowerment.
And More
- President Roland Sanchez-Medina, Jr., completed his committee appointments and the 177 individuals selected for committee leadership appointments were notified. There were 1,172 applicants who submitted over 2,500 preference forms to serve on Bar committees.
- The Florida Bar launched Florida Free Legal Answers on May 1, 2017, and it continues to be one of the top programs in the nation. The Florida Bar is celebrating the seven-year anniversary of the program this year. Florida Free Legal Answers has over 1,106 volunteers.
- Two new member benefits were added to The Florida Bar Member Benefits program this year. This brings the total number of approved member benefit providers to more than 77, which is more than any other state bar program.
- Legal Publications released 12 new editions in the last fiscal year and is expected to release the sixth edition of The Florida Bar Probate System this year.
- The Bar conducted a record-breaking Annual Florida Bar Convention in June at the Signia by Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek where more than 319 meetings/events were coordinated and more than 2,500 attendees participated.
