John DeVault

By Francie Weinberg
Student writer

John DeVault III (JD 67) had no connection to lawyers growing up, but what he did have was books. He read about Clarence Darrow, Thurgood Marshall and other great lawyers.

“Those were life-changing events in our world, and seeing that lawyers had the ability to have that kind of impact really made an impression on me,” DeVault said. “I thought what lawyers did was go to court. Arguing in court was exciting to me so that’s always what I wanted to do and what I’ve always done.”

As a journalism major at the University of Florida, DeVault spent much of his time traveling the country with the Debate Team. He was also active in Florida Blue Key. In law school, he joined the moot court team and was executive editor of the Florida Law Review. He excelled in trial practice.

DeVault took ethics classes in the evenings, during which lawyers and judges from around the state would come to talk to students. He remembers one night in particular when Judge Tyrie Boyer from Jacksonville visited his class.

“I remember him saying, ‘there’s one firm that appears before me and every time they appear I know they will be well-prepared,’” DeVault recalls. “After that class, I went up to him and I said, ‘Judge Boyer, if you don’t mind, would you tell me who that firm is? Because that’s where I want to go to work.’ So I did everything I could to become an associate at that firm and fortunately I was lucky enough to get a job there and I’ve been here ever since.”

DeVault is now managing partner of the Bedell Firm in Jacksonville, the oldest law firm in Florida. He is dedicated solely to litigation matters and supervises the activities of the firm and its 14 lawyers.

DeVault also served as president of The Florida Bar from 1995 to 1996 where he promoted professionalism among lawyers. He has handled a variety of cases such as a child abuse case against the city, a commercial damages case against David Boies and arguing a criminal conspiracy appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court. Most recently, he represented three Florida Supreme Court justices as they fought the removal of their names from the November merit retention ballot.

But the most rewarding part of his job? Successfully defending a person charged with a federal crime who faces the possibility of years in prison.

“The big verdicts are nice, but seeing someone walk out of the courtroom free of federal criminal charges is the most satisfying,” he said.

DeVault also enjoys raising thoroughbred horses in Ocala with his wife, Sue, traveling and reading.

Despite the growing number of small firms merging into larger firms, DeVault still has hope for firms like Bedell.

“I like to think that a firm like ours that specializes in a particular area and does it well continues to have a place in the legal community,” he said.

He also sees bright futures for students who wish to practice law, especially those graduating from the Levin College of Law.

“I know for law students the job market is really difficult and a lot of people discourage students from going to law school,” DeVault said. “But I think if you go and excel at a law school that gives a good education and is well-regarded, such as University of Florida, that despite the job market and the prospects, individuals will be successful.”

He encourages students to be open to different opportunities and experiences. The more areas of the law that they can work in before settling into a career, the better. He also suggests that every student find a mentor that they can trust and be inspired by, as he was by Chester Bedell. Most importantly, though, DeVault encourages students to be prepared.

“What sets good lawyers apart from mediocre lawyers is preparation,” DeVault said. “If you know what to expect and you’re ready for it, you’ll come out better. Assume every lawyer that’s on the other side is smarter than you and that you need to work hard to overcome that.”

He always understood numbers, his undergraduate major was accounting and he was a certified public accountant a year out of college. But when he began law school after working for a year as a CPA, he quickly realized he had a lot to learn about the grey areas of the law.

“In accounting, the answer to a problem is white or black,” Comiter said.  “In law, the answer may often involve a grey area which has more than one answer and requires thought and clarification.”

Comiter focused in on those tough in-between areas that so often occur when examining the law, and over the past three decades he has built a well-earned reputation as one of the most highly respected tax and trust and estate lawyers in the state of Florida.

Some of Comiter’s more recent distinctions include being selected as the 2010-2011 recipient of the Tax Section of The Florida Bar’s Gerald T. Hart Outstanding Tax Attorney of the Year Award, as a Fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, and being recognized by The Wall Street Journal and South Florida Legal Guide as a Top 100 Florida Super Lawyer.

He has been an active member of UF Law’s Board of Trustees since 2007 and is the head of its Planned Giving Taskforce.  Comiter has kept himself busy over the past four years as a member of The Florida Bar’s Drafting Committee working to revise Florida’s Limited Liability Company Act.  The Drafting Committee will be submitting the revised Act to the legislature later this year. Comiter said the revised LLC Act contains significant administrative, procedural and substantive changes to the existing LLC Act.

When Comiter graduated from UF Law with an LL.M. in Taxation in 1981, he went to work for the next nine years with a large South Florida law firm. Until he left that large firm and established a boutique tax practice with his partner, he felt he could not really start making a difference in the tax world.

“I felt that in a large law firm a tax lawyer is ancillary to the other partners’ practices,” Comiter said. “In your own tax firm you could build your own practice, have your own clients and create your own goals.”

He would continue on with his partner for another nine years before finally establishing Comiter, Singer, Baseman & Braun, which is now the largest tax firm in Palm Beach County.

Comiter said there have been three key guiding light principles he has strived to follow over the years in establishing and building his practice:  Communicate with your clients, deliver the best possible work product you can, and do the right thing.

“The most difficult part of the practice of law is producing a high quality work product in a very complicated area of the law that has to be correct 100% of the time,” he said.  But Comiter wouldn’t settle for anything less.

His advice to current law students when they graduate is to “focus on being the best possible lawyer you can be; learn how to practice law and don’t worry about bringing in clients until you know how to be the best lawyer you can be.”

Comiter’s expertise as a tax attorney and involvement in the Florida Bar Tax Section has resulted in his involvement in a number of other Florida Bar Drafting Committees involving business entities in the state of Florida, such as the Revised Limited Liability Company Act, the Revised Uniform Partnership Act, the Revised Uniform Limited Partnership Act and the Olmstead Patch Drafting Committee.  Comiter said his involvement with these Drafting Committees has brought about some of his most satisfying experiences.

“It’s very rewarding to see what you do – when you’re in a client meeting and the client questions why the law is a certain way, you can tell them why it was drafted this way, because you were part of the drafting committee that drafted the law.”

Bruce earned a B.S. in telecommunications at UF before entering into the joint degree program.

During his junior year as an undergraduate, an internship with The McLaughlin Group TV program in Washington, D.C., sparked Bruce’s passion for policy. There, his interests morphed from reporting the news to making it.

After graduating from law school, Bruce began his career at Gray Robinson, P.A. practicing governmental law. Bruce worked his way up to partner, and was then approached to work for Walt Disney World as director of Government Relations.

For three years Bruce helped to keep the Disney spirit alive.

“Disney is a tremendous company,” he said. “It captures the hearts and minds of people of all ages from the young to the young at heart.”

In 2009, Bruce and his partner Tico Perez started Edge Public Affairs, LLC, a public policy consulting firm in Orlando.

Bruce credited his confidence to pursue these diverse paths not only to his degrees, but also, to the work experience he obtained during law school.

“I was definitely prepared, but there’s no level of education that can replace hands-on experience in the field of law. That’s why they call it the practice of law,” Bruce said.

After graduating, Bruce wasn’t sure how he would combine the skills he fostered in both graduate degrees. He worried if he’d made the right decision. It wasn’t until his job at Disney that he was able to successfully use the business skills he acquired from his MBA.

“Don’t be afraid to do something that you didn’t see yourself doing,” Bruce said.

He described the willingness of students to jump in and take the unpaid internship or job in another practice area as an advantage, rather than a setback.

When he’s not working, Bruce enjoys playing golf and spending time with his son. He also enjoys reading biographies and the Bible.

Life may seem like it comes easy to Bruce, but he faces obstacles like the rest of us, namely time management and balancing work and his personal life.

Realizing your priorities and adjusting your time around present demands is the key to maintaining a good life balance, he said.

One of Bruce’s favorite aphorisms illustrates this philosophy: “You can have it all; you just can’t have it all at one time.”

- Lindsey Tercilla
Student writer

It’s no secret that the legal profession is a rapidly changing field, with factors such as technology and globalization reshaping the landscape in ways previously unimagined. At the same time, expectations of the skills new graduates should possess before entering the legal world continue to evolve.

The University of Florida Levin College of Law has always been a state leader in education, and in keeping with that tradition, Dean Robert Jerry, the UF Law strategic planning committee, faculty and staff are looking closely at how the college can best prepare students for this new legal world.

Prepared, practiced, professional

Pascale Bishop, UF Law’s new assistant dean for career development said that at her previous school, the slogan “Prepared, practiced, professional” expressed what legal employers like to see in young law school graduates these days.

Bishop said employers are looking for “students and graduates who have already received practical experience, who are prepared to take a file and run with it, and who know how to interact with clients, other attorneys, judges, support staff and the professional world at large.”

This might seem like a common sense goal, but it hasn’t always been like that in the legal world. Although students in the past received practical experience through internships, externships and clinics, the main thrust of their legal education focused on the theoretical and academic study of legal theories, not hands-on experience.

“The critique is that students can leave law school without really having a deep understanding of what the practice of law is like,” Jerry said. “In the past, I think many graduates of law schools nationally have acquired understanding in their first practice years.”

So on-the-job-training was the traditional expectation for legal educators and employers alike. Not anymore.

In the last few years, economic pressures combined with a more competitive legal marketplace have led to new normal.

“There is definitely more pressure to be ready to practice from day one with little training or hand-holding, in order to prove (new employees’) value to the law firms,” Bishop said.

And to meet those expectations, UF Law is looking to the future and staying ahead of the curve by evolving its curriculum to produce graduates equipped to compete in this still-changing legal field.

New Mission guides curriculum

UF Law recently adopted an updated academic mission statement proposed by the College of Law Faculty Senate’s strategic planning committee to focus curriculum so students will be optimally equipped to meet the expectations of employers.

The statement hinges on five core competencies: Legal analysis, legal research and writing, fundamentals of client services, fundamentals of dispute processing and legal problem solving, and fundamentals of professional responsibility and identity.

Jerry said UF Law has led the way in legal skills training — pointing out how many law schools today are touting newly added legal drafting programs to their curriculum, a mainstay of the UF Law curriculum for years. But to align with the core competencies outlined in the mission statement, some practical skill areas will gain emphasis.

“We’re looking at how we can make what we’re doing even better,” he said.

Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Alyson Flournoy said UF Law is ready to implement a few changes in the curriculum.

“The faculty has approved a new one-credit legal research course that will be taught by the law librarians to all first-year students beginning next year,” Flournoy said. “Also beginning next fall, all first-year students will take a new Introduction to Lawyering course which will provide an introduction to the profession, a segment on professionalism and developing a professional identity and an introduction to the skills lawyers use.”

She said this course will provide students with a grounding to understand the legal profession better and help inform the choices they make in their academic program and other career development decisions.

“The strategic planning committee has now turned to focus on developing skills in the upper level curriculum and is looking at an array of options to achieve the goals set out in the mission statement,” Flournoy added. “This will build on some recent changes we’ve made to further strengthen the skills curriculum, including the recently developed Interviewing, Counseling and Negotiation course.”

The course will offer a significant number of students the chance to learn these core skills each semester and will serve as a gateway course for all the litigation clinics.

The Center for Career Development is also implementing new and innovative ways to help students succeed after graduation.

“We are incorporating professionalism into all of our programming and making sure that our counseling includes a discussion of how to handle their own professional development,” Bishop said, “including taking on new challenges like publishing or participating in bar associations, extracurricular activities or CLEs even as a student.”

Bishop encourages students to accumulate practical experience through internships, externships, volunteering, working as a law clerk or even classroom situations involving client problems and simulations.

Beginning in just a couple of weeks, FlaLaw will include a series of stories titled Career Corner. The purpose of this new feature is to give UF Law students insight, advice and information about career paths other UF Law grads have taken.

We will explore a diverse range of careers and we want your feedback on what types of information you would like to learn in these stories. We are planning to ask 10 standard questions of subjects that will shed light on how they got into their careers, what is fulfilling about them, what the biggest challenges are and what they would tell students who are interested in pursuing a similar career.

We would like to know what questions you would ask if you had the chance. We will take all your questions into consideration and use the most popular or useful ones.

Send your questions to Matt Walker in the UF Law Communications Office at mlwalker@law.ufl.edu by Monday, Jan. 16.