LIVE FROM MARGARITAVILLE

Fins Up!

So this weekend I will be with 200 other Florida criminal defense lawyers (we are on the Atlantic Ocean, there’s a joke about that being a good start) reconnecting and re-energizing in this time of crazy prosecutions and unprecedented attacks on judges. The Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, now in its 39th year, has been responsible for some of the best training, networking, lobbying and professional support for hardworking, committed criminal defense lawyers.

I have always been amazed at the volunteer hours lawyers throughout the state put in to head committees to produce incredible continuing education courses, to identify and press for legislative action (or non-action, as the case may be), to support lawyers who find themselves in the cross-hairs of vindictive jurists, and to publish a fine quarterly magazine, The Defender.

Remember, everyone hates lawyers and makes nasty jokes about them until they need one. We are non-judgmental about our clients, we don’t shame them and we work hard to make sure they are not lost in the industrial-judicial machinery. We don’t want our clients to become, as Tom Wolfe put it in Bonfire of the Vanities, “the chow!”

So since we are often known as sharks, “Fins Up" to my incredible colleagues, and as Jimmy Buffett purportedly said in his last hours on this planet, “Keep the Party Going!”