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25 Fla. B. News 1 (1998)

handle is hein.barjournals/flabn0025 and id is 1 raw text is: .1 JI , ,'..' CUJd., 7 ~ j~JJji~ . J.-( J ~ ''~ i,;LrjtJ ,(. . ... ..... lIh Le LLIC (I 1io -o~ 1f Volume 25, Number I . Lr3v.y1' r January 1, 1998 worki ng for' you Twenty-five years ago Linda Yates spotted a trend. As editor of The Florida Bar Journal since 1959, she had seen the number of lawyers sky- rocket. Bar membership topped 17,000, with no end in sight. The Florida Bar was beginning to explode - in the number of lawyers and the number of activities, she re- calls. We weren't used to such rapid growth. The Journal was published on the 15th of the month, and took a month to produce, she says, which meant our calendar of events and other things , were dated by the ? time the lawyers re- -. ceived their maga- I .- zine. So she started a newspaper. No other state bar had a newspa- YATES per back then. We had no model. We started from scratch, she says. A scan of the headlines in the eight- page inaugural issue of The Florida BarNews brings to mind Mark Twain's observation that it isn't really news, they just change the names. Under the head Nation's Law Ad- missions Set Record in 1973; Legal Employment Lags, ABA President Chesterfield Smith says of the 30,000 successful bar candidates nationwide, I seriously doubt that all these law- yers can be gainfully employed in the law... but if we change the system so people who need a lawyer can afford to hire him ... . We ran the same story last month, with the only change being, so people can afford to hire him or her..... Linda wrote the copy betweenJour- nal issues. Nancy McDaniel (now head of the Bar's Office Systems Depart- ment) set the type, and, Linda recalls, we had a girl come in for the paste-up who had to work on a drafting board in the broom closet. MV, How We've Grown Linda retired in 1989, after watch- ing the newspaper grow steadily for 16 years. We now have three full-time report- ers writing for 66,500 readers, and a four-person ad staff responsible for generating $1.1 million of the paper's $1.2 million budget. Computers have replaced the typesetters and paste-up staff. As we begin our 25th year, the fu- ture of the paper looks bright. Bar sur- veys rank the newspaper and magazine as the two Bar services most appreciated by the membership. The Board of Governors and Budget Com- mittee continue their support. Eighteen Circuit Judge Tom Free- man was the liaison to our editorial board when he served on the Board of Governors, and now is serving his third term as chair of the editorial board. The board will review the paper's content later this year, and invites your comments. Our address, fax number and e-mail address are on page 2. -Judson Orrick Editor JUST A REPMuNDER- The Supreme Court has amended the continuing edu- cation requirement effective July 1998 to require that five of the 30 CLE hours re- ported each year must relate to ethics, professionalism or substance abuse. The new requirement applies to those report- ing next July, and thereafter. Ecfoln th 1sLman nam@d By Gary Blankenship Associate Editor Veteran Miami Board of Governors member Edith Osman has won election without opposition as The Florida Bar's president-elect designate when the nomi- nation period ended December 15. She will take office in June as presi- dent-elect and in June 1999 as Bar presi- dent. Osman becomes the second woman to lead the Bar, and the first to win with- out opposition. This also marks the fourth straight year a president-elect has been chosen without opposition. I am honored and privileged to have the opportunity to lead The Florida Bar, the best bar in the country, Osman said. I am gratified to have been elected to the position of president-elect of The Florida Bar without opposition. Osman said she worked hard prior to the filing period lining up support and garnered 3,200 signatures on her nomi- nating petitions, far more than the 570 required by Bar rules. Her ascension to the top spot, Osman said, is the culmination of more than 10 By Gary Blankenship Associate Editor An opt-in and opt-out merit selection and retention system for trial judges appears likely to be headed to voters next November, following action by the Con- stitution Revision Commission. The commission, at its December 10- 12 meetings, also addressed several other court-related issues. The CRC, after more than 90 minutes of amendments and debates, voted to send the merit selection plan to its Style and Drafting Committee for preparation of amendment language. Although it will come back to the com- mission for final action, the amendment's chances appear good: It takes, under CRC rules, the votes of 22 of the 37 com- missioners to send a proposal to voters and it was approved by a 30-5 margin. As passed the amendment would go to voters in November. If passed, on the November 2000 ballot voters in each cir- cuit would be asked whether they want to keep electing trial judges or would prefer to have merit selection and reten- tion. Circuits with a majority favoring the merit system would go to that immedi- ately, others would retain an elected lo- cal bench. Thereafter, a petition signed by 10 percent of the number of voters casting ballots in the most recent presi- 'We need to meet the 21st Century with a revitalized outlook. We need to communicate to the public the spirit of our profession and the good things lavyers do.' years of Bar work. That work has given her some goals. First and foremost, I plan to support the programs of President Ed Blumberg and President-elect Howard Coker, Osman said. I still have work to do implementing the new grievance media- tion program that I have been working on this past year. (She is co-chair of the committee overseeing that effort.) The new president-elect designate also wants to improve the public percep- 'If we don't V. offer the V people the Sright and , :. ability to vote Oilthis type of > selection system for judges, I believe we have not met the challenge we were given when we accepted appointment.' - Dexter Douglass Constitution Revision Commission dential election would place the issue on the ballot again. The amendment specifi- cally allows those who would choose merit selection in 2000 to return to an elected system or those who opted for elections to switch to merit selection. As originally proposed, the amend- ment would not have allowed a switch back to elections once a circuit's voters By Mark D. Killian Associate Editor Fourth DCA Judge Barbara J. Pariente was named to replace retiring Justice Stephen Grimes on the Florida t Supreme Court December 10. Judge Pariente has had a long and distinguished legal career and she has all the skills necessary to be an excel- elf lent and effective Supreme Court jus- tice, Gov. Lawton Chiles said in announcing the appointment. She is fair, intelligent, dedicated to serving jus- tice, well-respected not only in the legal community but in her entire community. She has certainly worked to make a posi- tive difference, and I know she will con- tinue to promote justice as a member of the Florida Supreme Court. Pariente, 48, practiced law for 18 years before being named by Chiles to the DCA four years ago. She is the sec- ond woman to serve on the high court. Chief Justice Gerald Kogan said the court already is familiar with Pariente, having reviewed her work as a DCA judge. The court also appointed Pariente GOV. LAWTON CHILES announced t[ appointment of Judge Barbara Pariente See Pariente, page 10 the Supreme Court December 10. tion of lawyers. We have a great profes- sion, but the decline in professionalism and increased media ridicule have See Osman, page 5 had opted for the appointive system. But CRC members approved an amendment by member H.T. Smith to allow opting out as well as opting in. The passage came after CRC Chair Dexter Douglass relinquished the gavel and made a plea for the amendment. Douglass, a member of the 1978 CRC, recalled that he opposed the amendment that year to extend merit selection and retention to al! trial judg;es, a po: !;Pn he came to regret. (All eight amendment packages as- sembled by the 1978 commission were rejected by voters, as was an initiative amendment, but the merit selection pro- posal came closest to passage, garnering over 49 percent of the vote.) Douglass said when he finished law school 43 years ago, he could 'name ev- ery judge in the state. We are now liv- ing in a different state with different people with a large population, he said, adding that in urban areas, it's impos- sible for people to know all their judges, although they might in a rural area. If we don't do anything else in the judicial system, if we don't offer the people the right and ability to vote on this type of selection system for judges, I believe we have not met the challenge we were given when we accepted this ap- pointment, Douglass said. He also said while the appointive sys- tem has problems, it is less political and fraught with conflicts than electing See Constitution, page 4 he to optionso Mou B'udge sooe-CHOR

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