• Appointed the Florida Liaison to the American Bar Association’s Business Law’s Committee on Corporate Laws.

Harrell works in the firm’s Ocala office as one of two resident partners, along with fellow UF Law grad J. Theodore “Ted” Schatt. As a general civil litigator, Harrell has been doing more work representing health care facilities since joining the firm. “I have been given the opportunity to really spread my wings and start my own practice and be a general practitioner here in Ocala, and it’s been great,” he said.

With a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Virginia, Harrell served on the executive board of Florida Law Review while in law school as the senior writing competition editor. The experience served him well. “Obviously, that type of exercise is very important for practicing law,” he said. “It teaches you good traits.”

Immediately following law school, he worked for an insurance defense firm in Tallahassee. “It gave me a lot of good experience right out of the gate doing civil litigation,” said Harrell, who also met his wife Stephanie, a Florida State grad, during this time. After two years there, the couple moved to Miami, where Harrell worked with Ferrell Law and Stephanie attended medical school at the University of Miami. While gaining experience directly representing clients, Harrell worked on some major civil cases and developed an interest in probate litigation.

Today, Harrell commutes to work from Gainesville, where Stephanie is a pediatric resident at Shands. They plan to settle in Ocala, where both of them are from originally.

“When you graduate from UF, if you want to practice here, there is such a vast network of UF law grads throughout the country, particularly in Florida, and you are immediately made part of that network and sort of taken into the fold.”

Speakers include Mike Foley, master lecturer, Hugh Cunningham Professor in Journalism Excellence, College of Journalism & Communications, University of Florida; Gregg D. Thomas, Thomas & LoCicero, Tampa; Judge Jacqueline Griffin, Fifth District Court of Appeals of Florida; Judge Anne C. Conway, U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Florida; and Fletcher N. Baldwin, Jr., Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law, director, Centre for International Financial Crime Studies. Jon Mills, dean emeritus, professor of law, Levin College of Law, and founding director, Center for Governmental Responsibility, will serve as moderator for the discussion.

“This is a contemporary point of conflict in the United States,” said Mills, who has studied privacy issues and been involved in legal cases in this area during his career.

Some of the proposed scenarios to be discussed at the event include:

• A 1999 Mississippi case, Plaxico v. Michael, in which an expectation of privacy in the seclusion of one’s own bedroom was not considered reasonable when the individual was involved in a lesbian relationship and in a child custody fight with her husband.

• A female president of a college’s student association sued a newspaper for invasion of privacy by public discourse of private facts when a columnist disclosed that she was actually a man. The newspaper argued that the publication was newsworthy and protected by the First Amendment. The jury found for the plaintiff.

• The case of a medical examiner who allowed a cable network film crew to follow him to a hotel room where a woman had been thrown to her death from the balcony by her husband, who then died when he fell or jumped. The film crew recorded the crime scene, including the woman’s dead body, and the next morning shot photos of the nude bodies. The parents and sister of the dead woman sued the network, the parties associated with the program, and the medical examiner’s office.

• In December, President George W. Bush issued a “presidential signing statement” related to a Postal Service bill, which said a subsection of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act “provides for opening an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection.” The statement said the administration had the right to “conduct searches in exigent circumstances” such as to protect human life and safety against hazardous materials, and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection.”

A reception will follow the symposium at 1:30 p.m. in the Faculty Dining Room, Bruton-Geer Hall. UF Law