Member Spotlight
Being named the 2026 Trial Lawyer of the Year by the American Board of Trial Advocates of Central Florida is the professional honor of my lifetime. It took 30 years working as a civil trial lawyer for me to be invited to membership in ABOTA, and I was absolutely thrilled when it happened. The American Board of Trial Advocates is an invitation only organization of the finest civil trial lawyers in the country. It’s membership roster is a who’s who of civil trial lawyers I have always looked up to, and always tried to emulate. ABOTA is a champion for the civil jury trial system, access to justice, and judicial independence. I am very grateful, and I am very blessed.
It is close to a miracle that I am here. You see, my mother was born in one of those rural, thatched huts you see in pictures of the West of Ireland. She had shoes that she wore to go to church and school, and that was all. She spoke Gaelic before English. Her mother died, and she was raised in an orphanage with her sister under very harsh conditions. She came to the U.S. at age 17 to work as a nanny for a wealthy family near Boston. At age 30, she married my father, had 2 sons, and then learned her husband had developed Multiple Sclerosis. He quickly progressed from cane to walker to wheelchair during my childhood, and she did her best to keep it all together.
When I was about age 8, I remember my mother telling me that she could not afford to buy me a new bicycle like the other kids had. Imagine what goes through the mind of a parent telling their child that. I knew it was true, but blessings are often disguised, I’ve learned. My response, and back in those days it was possible, was for me to pay for 4 paper routes over time to other children who had them, and wake up at 5 am week in and week out to buy that bicycle. It was a Royce Union. I kept that paper route to help my family buy food and such, and my mother later insisted on paying me back every penny.
School was my escape, and my route to a better life. My mother, and you can see who really deserves any credit here, knew of expensive boarding schools from her nanny days. Those boarding schools sometimes give out full scholarships to poor kids who somehow manage to have high grades and test scores. So, off I went to boarding school, and that changed the trajectory of my life. From there I went to college and law school. Mom gave me a choice of doctor or lawyer, and I didn’t want to be around sick people anymore. I wasn’t going to disappoint mom though. Don’t get me wrong. I struggled with, and for, everything. I worked for everything I wanted, and I felt like a stranger in a strange land everywhere I went. When my boarding school classmates went to Vail on vacation, I went home. College was the same. I worked during every school vacation I ever had.
I decided to be a trial lawyer because I believed I needed to find a career where I could build my skills with my own hands. I didn’t know anyone or anything. So, I figured I should do my best to make myself useful. If I could get good at this, I thought, then maybe people would want me to represent them. I liked thinking, and I liked competition. I thought I could do this, and then I did it. I struggled in this too, but fate smiled upon me. I found lawyers who helped teach me how to be a trial lawyer, some intentionally and some by example. People can be very kind, and some can be very unkind, and learning comes from both. I have worked hard at this my entire career. I am determined to learn and improve continually to this day.
These days, I continue to enjoy my trials and my law firm. In addition to being ABOTA of Central Florida’s Trial Lawyer of the Year, I am also the new elected Governor of Florida’s 18th Judicial Circuit. I am Board Certified in Civil Trial Law. I am an AV® Preeminent™ rated attorney, by Martindale-Hubbell. I was appointed by the Florida Supreme Court to its Committee on Standard Jury Instructions in Civil Cases. I serve on the Executive Council of The Trial Lawyers Section of The Florida Bar. I serve on various Bar committees, trying to make things better, and I even got to write the updated Guidelines for Professional Conduct of the section that were adopted by the Conferences of Circuit and County Court Judges. I got to testify as a subject matter expert before a committee of the Florida Legislature, and I was absolutely fascinated to be a speaker and confer with private sector and government lawyers in Argentina who are working diligently to form their own civil jury trial system of justice. That was a national ABOTA initiative, by the way. I get to work with the U.S. State Department on international child abduction cases, of all things. I get to represent and help people every day in so many ways. There is so much more. Learning never stops. That I have had the opportunity to do any of these things is as close to a miracle as I know. I am so grateful to everyone who has helped me along this path, whether they knew it or not. I am grateful to, and for, my ever-supportive wife and 3 incredible children, my mother, of course, and I am grateful to God, for none of this would have been possible without God in my life and in the lives of my family.
