Timon Sullivan (JD 79) gives advice to UF Law students Nov. 14 in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center courtroom. (Photo by Elise Giordano)

By Francie Weinberg
Student writer

Timon Sullivan (JD 79) says the five fundamentals of being a successful trial attorney include telling the truth, being the most respectful person in the courtroom, being prepared and organized, mastering the rules and being yourself but learning from others.

Anyone interested in a career in trial advocacy might want to listen. That’s because Sullivan, who spoke in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center courtroom on Wednesday, was named the 2012 trial advocate of the year by the Florida chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates. The UF Law graduate designated his award gift to the law school’s trial program.

“These are the most basic things you can learn,” Sullivan said. “From the very first day you step foot out of here, and really while you’re here, you are building a reputation that you are going to carry with you for the rest of your life.”

He also encouraged students to find their own personal style in order to allow everyone in the courtroom to perceive them as genuine.

“You are whoever you are right now,” he said. “You’re not going to be someone different five years from now. However you relate to people, you’re probably going to relate that way for the rest of your life. You’ve got to be whoever you are and make that your style.”

Finally, Sullivan explained the benefits of technology in the courtroom, demonstrating how to use TrialPad and TranscriptPad, which are both apps for the iPad.

“I have been kicking the butts of these 30-something-year-old lawyers because they just don’t use technology,” Sullivan said. “Here I am, a 58-year-old lawyer, using an iPad. You guys have been using the computer since you were born.”

In 1990, Sullivan co-founded Ogden and Sullivan P.A., a civil trial practice firm in Tampa. He practices transportation litigation, life, health and disability insurance litigation, ERISA, personal injury and wrongful death, products liability, professional negligence and commercial litigation.

The federal government collects a large amount of information that is never widely released. This information, however, can still be of great use and is still available to those who know how to access it. In 1966, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was passed, which allows people to obtain federal agency records, with a few specific exceptions. FOIA requests can be cumbersome and confusing, but a few agencies are trying to alleviate this problem with FOIAOnline.

FOIAOnline provides one location to submit and track your own FOIA requests and search other users’ requests. The following agencies are participating in the program:

• Environmental Protection Agency
• Department of Commerce (except the US Patent and Trademark Office)
• Office of General Counsel of the National Archives and Records Administration
• Merit System Protection Board
• Federal Labor Relations Authority

Interested in submitting a FOIA request to an agency that is not listed above? See How to Make a FOIA Request on FOIA.gov for tips on writing a request.

From left, Brandon Meadows, Stephanie Koffler, Sarah Carpenter and Lauren Lewis won first place in the 2012 E. Earle Zehmer Mock Trial Competition Nov. 11 and 12 in Tampa.

UF Law Trial Team is the 2012 state champion. The University of Florida Levin College of Law Trial Team took home that distinction with its first place in the E. Earle Zehmer Mock Trial Competition Nov. 11 and Nov. 12 in Tampa.

The University of Florida Levin College of Law Trial Team took home first place in the 2012 E. Earle Zehmer Mock Trial Competition Nov. 11 and 12 in Tampa.

The competition, a premises liability suit, was sponsored by the Florida Justice Association and consisted of seven Florida law schools and 14 teams.

UF Law sent two teams, one of which earned first place. The winning team consisted of third-year law students Stephanie Koffler and Brandon Meadows as the plaintiff, and Sarah Carpenter and Lauren Lewis as defendant. The other UF team consisted of 3Ls Ebony Cobb, Andrick Lewis, Seth Green and Josh Wertheim. The trial team coaches Nick Zissimopulos, of Rush and Glassman, and Tania Alavi, of Alavi, Bird and Puzzuto traveled with the teams to offer support.

With a narrow victory over Florida State University College of Law in the semi-finals, UF advanced to the final round against Florida International University College of Law, where it won in what seemed to be an overwhelming victory. Along with the pride of winning a state championship, the UF team took home a $1,000 cash prize.

“We have a very talented group of advocates who were more prepared and focused than the competition, and this win is the result. The Trial Team has incredible support from UF, the coaches, and our advisor, Jennifer Zedalis, and we hope to stand in the winner’s circle again in the spring,” said Brandon Meadows, the trial team president.

It had been several years since UF has competed in this competition. Though they have no more competitions in the fall, they look forward to the spring when they will compete in Chester E. Beddell Memorial Competition, TYLA National Trial Competition, American Association for Justice Tournament and the South Texas Shootout.

“They worked very hard and practiced long hours, so this effort combined with sheer talent pushed them over the top,” Zedalis said. “I am so proud of them.”

From left, Debra Staats, associate dean for administrative and fiscal affairs; Alyson Flournoy, senior associate dean for academic affairs; Dean Robert Jerry; and Rachel Inman, associate dean for students, paneled a town hall meeting Nov. 13. (Photo by Marcela Suter)

By Felicia Holloman (3L)

University of Florida Levin College of Law’s John Marshall Bar Association held a town hall to tackle hot-button issues for students and potential solutions.

Students, faculty, and staff filled the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom on Nov. 13 to discuss concerns regarding exam scheduling, the variety of classes offered and library hours.

Dean Robert Jerry; Rachel Inman, associate dean for students; Alyson Flournoy, senior associate dean for academic affairs; and Debra Staats, associate dean for administrative and fiscal affairs, paneled the meeting.

The topics discussed at the town hall were chosen through a student survey, which received 169 responses.

A high-priority issue was the exam conflict rule, which allows students to reschedule an exam if more than one of their exams is scheduled on the same day. The rule does not allow adjustments for students who have two exams within 24 hours of each other.

Nearly 80 percent of respondents reported general dissatisfaction with the rule, while 88.7 percent of respondents reported that having more than one exam in a 24-hour period puts them at a disadvantage.

One proposed solution is to institute a reading period. But Inman remarked that a reading period would likely extend the semester, and could pose problems for students who live on campus or receive financial aid. Jerry suggested scheduling conflicts with main campus may be avoided by starting the semester earlier.

Although the faculty needs to be consulted on the question of changing the exam conflict rule, Jerry believes students expressed compelling reasons for the change.

“This is a solid argument,” Jerry said. Inman hopes for a change to the conflict exam rule to be instituted by spring semester.

Another issue concerned the variety of classes offered in certain concentrations. A total of 56.6 percent of respondents reported that they were dissatisfied with the number of classes offered in their area of interest. A significant percentage of these responses called for more classes in criminal; entertainment, arts, and sports; and real property, probate, and trust law.

Flournoy explained some of the factors that influence the classes offered.

“We look at enrollment each semester and adjust accordingly,” Flournoy said.  “We try to balance the number of offerings in different subject areas so that there is a good array of offerings each semester.”  But in general, the spring semester schedule accounts for students enrolling in fewer credit hours. Thus the number of electives offered is adjusted accordingly.

According to Flournoy, faculty members are working with the administration with the goal of developing additional tools for academic guidance to help advise students on courses that are relevant to different career paths, some of which may not be obvious to students. Flournoy is also working with faculty to develop additional courses in areas of strong student interest.

A change to be instituted this semester is 24-hour access to a classroom for studying in the weeks prior to exams. Law students may use their swipe cards to access the room seven days a week. The change comes amid student complaints that libraries around campus and the county are not opened often enough.

Jerry expressed his appreciation for students’ input.

“We get a lot of good ideas from this, either through comments in the survey or the town hall,” Jerry said.

Two positions are now available at the Florida Supreme Court for the Spring 2012 semester. They are each a five-credit externship, running Jan. 14 – April 26, 2013, and require 20 hours per week. You must have a clearance letter from The Florida Bar to participate. For more information or to apply, contact Tim McLendon in CGR in 230 Bruton-Geer, by email at mclendon@law.ufl.edu or by phone at 273-0835.

Applications open for 2013 Evan Yegelwel Summer Fellowship

The Evan Yegelwel Summer Fellowship award permits one UF Law student to participate in a paid Summer Fellowship Program at the Anti-Defamation League, Florida Regional Office in Boca Raton. The Yegelwel Summer Fellowship award is $4,000. The ADL is a premier national civil rights organization that fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry in the U.S. and abroad, combats international terrorism, probes the roots of hatred, comes to the aid of victims of bigotry, develops educational programs, and serves as a public resource for government, media, law enforcement, all toward the goal of countering and reducing hatred. A generous gift from Evan Yegelwel (JD 80) has made this fellowship possible. Yegelwel is a partner in the Jacksonville law firm of Terrell Hogan Ellis Yegelwel, P.A. Click here for more fellowship and application information.

Spring Semester Foreign Enrichment Course and Spring Break Field Course will feature international development law and policy

The UF Levin College of Law Environmental and Land Use Law Program will offer conservation and development practice related courses for spring semester. Students are eligible to enroll in either or both:

• Contemporary International Development: Law, Policy and Practice (1 credit) (spring semester on campus)
• Sustainable Development Field Course: Law Policy and Practice (2 credits) (spring break in Belize)

Contemporary International Development: Law, Policy and Practice (1 credit) addresses the international and comparative law framework within which international development is carried out. The course will explore models of international development and development assistance as these have evolved since the Post-WWII Breton Woods accords that created the World Bank Group and regional progeny. Topics that will be addressed include, but are not limited to, free and fair trade, environmental security, human rights and global health. The course will be coordinated by UF Law faculty and taught by law and policy practitioners from Costa Rica, Argentina and Jamaica. Course instructors include Otton Solis, a Costa Rican development economist, former minister of the economy and presidential candidate; Oscar Avalles, an Argentine attorney and World Bank country director for Guatemala; and Danielle Andrade, a Jamaican environmental and human rights attorney with the Jamaica Environment Trust. The one-credit course will meet for one hour on Tuesday and Wednesday at 9 a.m. and conclude on Feb. 27 before spring break.

SPRING BREAK FIELD COURSE IN BELIZE

Sustainable Development Field Course: Law Policy and Practice (2 credits) will provide students with an on-site, interdisciplinary understanding of the law and policy challenges associated with “sustainable development” in a developing country. Students will travel to and within Belize over spring break and delve into international and domestic law issues concerning protected areas, indigenous land rights, intellectual property in biological diversity, water, mining and energy development, fisheries and coral reef conservation – all within the context of national pressures for human development. In addition to domestic Belizean law and international development policy, students will be exposed to the unique legal framework of the commonwealth Caribbean. The course will include skills exercises based around ongoing projects of the UF Law Conservation Clinic. The course includes a Program fee that will cover in-country expenses and students must make their own international travel arrangements. Enrollment is capped at 12 students. Preference in given to students enrolled in the college of law’s Environmental and Land Use Law Program, but others may apply on a space-available basis.

Students interested in either course can contact Professors Tom Ankersen (ankersen@law.ufl.edu) Mary Jane Angelo (angelo@law.ufl.edu) or Research Assistant and Joint J.D./M.D.P candidate Gentry Mander (Gentry.Mander@gmail.com )

C. David Brown, II (JD 78) is heading the search for the 12th President of the University of Florida. (Photo by Marcela Suter)

By Richard Goldstein

C. David Brown, II (JD 78) is looking for a new CEO. It’s a task he’s getting used to. As a member of the CVS/Caremark board, Brown helped select a new CEO last year. Now he’s in the market to find the 12^th President of the University of Florida.

Brown, chairman of the UF Board of Trustees and chairman of the statewide law firm Broad and Cassel, calls the UF presidency the second most important job in Florida.

“It’s a very demanding job,” Brown said in an interview from his law offices overlooking Orlando’s downtown. “They’re running one of the nation’s premiere public universities with some of the top students in the country, a prestigious faculty and a research component that is one of the largest in the country. In addition, they oversee a major health care system, one of the largest in the state of Florida, hugely involved in research and quality of care issues. And not to mention a world-class athletic program they have to manage.”

Brown noted that leading a great academic institution is only half the job. UF is a 150-year-old land-grant university with the state’s largest land-grant agriculture and natural resources program (IFAS).

“In their spare time, the president must maintain relationships with the Legislature and carefully monitor the political environment of the state in order to maintain funding levels, which is a very complicated task,” Brown said. “Not to mention they have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations and keep our 340,000 alumni informed and satisfied as to the progress of their beloved alma mater.

“Now I think that’s a pretty complex job.”

Bernie Machen, who has held the post since 2004, announced in June that he will leave at the end of 2013. The lead time gives Brown, the 23-person search committee that he chairs and the Board of Trustees “a long runway” to find a replacement. Brown hopes to have a new president in place by the summer.

Dianna Morgan, a search committee member and past chairwoman of the UF Board of Trustees, told a group of UF administrators Thursday that a new president could be in place by the end of the calendar year. She expects soon to announce plans for public interviews and forums for five to seven presidential candidates.

The new president must shape a fast-changing higher education environment, says Brown, but he has a traditional idea in mind about where he should take the university: boost its academic rigor.

Admission to the University of Florida “shouldn’t be the peak,” Brown said. “I don’t think in all cases it’s like that but I think in some cases (it is). I just find it amazing how good these students are, and I want to make sure we’re pushing them to achieve what they can achieve.”

A long-time scholar of and active participant in higher education governance agrees that Florida should keep academic improvement in the forefront as it finds a new leader. James V. Koch is president emeritus of Old Dominion University and co-author of a book about the characteristics of successful university presidents.

“The University of Florida needs a president whose vision includes moving UF into the elite ranks of public universities, i.e., Michigan, Virginia, UC-Berkeley,” Koch wrote in an email. “UF should not be satisfied with anything less as its ambition. However, this must be more than simply a goal for the next president. He or she must enunciate credible plans for moving the institution to that position over a 10-to-20-year period.”

Koch and co-author James L. Fisher conclude that university presidents are most likely to succeed when they have held the job of a university president before.

“The evidence … is unmistakable.  It tells us that the best predictor of successful presidential performance is that individual’s previous successful experience as a president,” Koch said.

The presidential search committee headed by Brown has laid down desired traits for a new president. No candidate will have all the characteristics, but academic governance figures prominently.

Brown earned an accounting degree from UF before studying law, in which he specializes in real estate transactions. Brown noted UF Law Professor Fletcher Baldwin, now emeritus and who continues to teach, as an especially effective and influential instructor.

Brown rose to the chairmanship of the 170-lawyer, 8-office law firm of Broad and Cassel, where he has worked since shortly after leaving UF Law. Brown credits no dramatic court or business success with his ascension, but steady work building a stronger organization.

Brown’s family has lived in Florida since the 1860s. As a Florida native, he watched his state grow in population and economic power. In the 1950s, while Brown was in grade school, Florida was a post-war backwater with a population of nearly 3 million. Today, it is a Sun Belt megastate of more than 19 million people.

As the state became more powerful, Brown lent his talents to aid in its growth on more than one occasion.

Brown’s transaction expertise came in handy as he worked with then-Governor Jeb Bush to lure Scripps Research Institute, a bio-medical powerhouse, to Palm Beach County in 2003. He structured the complex public/private transaction that Bush pushed through the Legislature to seal the deal. Bush had previously appointed Brown to the Florida Transportation Commission from 1999 to 2004, and served as its chairman from 2000 to 2003.

Brown was first appointed a member of the UF Board of Trustees from February 2004 to 2008, and was later reappointed in June 2011. He has served as chairman since April 2012. The married father of two grown children doesn’t want to say how much time he’s spending on the most recent public service for his state and alma mater, though he allowed that finding a UF president is eating up much more time than expected.

“If you don’t have a good CEO you’re really hamstrung,” Brown observed. “I’ve had the benefit of having a great CEO to work with. I want to make sure we find a successor who can build on President Machen’s accomplishments.”

For his part, Machen figures Brown is the ideal person to recruit his successor.

“David Brown is a smart guy whose thoughtful, measured leadership style has been great for the University of Florida,” Machen said. “He understands and appreciates the university in all its complexity, and he is well-known and well-liked in Florida’s business, education and political circles. We couldn’t ask for a better person to head up the UF Board of Trustees and the university’s search for its next president.”

For more information about the search for a new UF president go to http://presidentialsearch.ufl.edu/.

“State task force addresses self-defense” (Nov. 14, 2012, The Alligator)

Jacobs commented in this article on Florida’s Stand Your Ground Task Force, which UF Law’s Criminal Justice Center participated in.

From the article:
“The Criminal Justice Center wanted the task force to study the data longer,” said Michelle Jacobs, a UF law professor. “They wanted them to do a more in-depth study so we could really understand what the numbers are saying.”

Jacobs said some of the data the panel reviewed isn’t a clear representation of what is happening across the state. For example, she said, different words are used by different police departments to convey the same meaning.

Diane Mazur
Professor of Law

“Adultery, an Ancient Crime That Remains on Many Books” (Nov. 14, 2012, The New York Times)

This article points out that while many saw the resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus as an act of acknowledging inappropriate behavior, adultery is still on the books as a criminal act in 23 states and is against the military code of conduct. Mazur weighed in on the likelihood of criminal prosecution.

From the article:
Mr. Petraeus is a retired four-star general who collects a military pension and remains subject to military codes of conduct that prohibit adultery. But Diane H. Mazur, a professor of law at the University of Florida and a former Air Force officer, said that the chances of the Army’s calling Mr. Petraeus back to active service in order to court-martial him over adultery are zero, as are any chances of state criminal charges being brought.

“That would be reserved for the most unimaginably serious circumstances,” Professor Mazur said. Even within the military code, she added, adultery is charged as a criminal offense only when “the conduct of the accused was to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces,” she read from the manual for courts-martial. That meant something larger than seemed at stake here.

“For The Military, A Possible Fall From Grace” (Nov. 13, 2012, NPR)

The resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus after admitting to adultery has raised multiple questions about the military’s reputation. Mazur addresses some of the issues, including accountability generally, and specifically regarding sexual misconduct.

From the article:
“Since Vietnam, we have come to a very dangerous bargain,” says Diane Mazur, author of A More Perfect Military. “You don’t ask me to serve in the military, and in return I will not ask questions or be difficult or demand accountability.”

That lack of accountability, Mazur says, extends to sexual misconduct.

“It’s ironic that what seems like the entire federal government has been mustered to address Gen. Petraeus’ affair, but we find it so difficult to focus in any effective way on the far more serious and long-standing problem of sexual assault,” Mazur says.