News From The Law School
UF Law celebrates opening of Advocacy Center courtroom, welcomes, Levins, Westin
The law school celebrated the opening of the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center courtroom with a ceremony (See the webcast at www.law.ufl .edu/news/webcasts/) that featured remarks by UF President Bernie Machen, as well as college namesake Fredric G. Levin (JD 61), his son, Martin H. Levin (JD 88), Teri Levin, who is Fredric Levin’s sister-in-law and wife of the late Allen Levin, and a keynote speech by the immediate past president of ABC News, David Westin. The ceremony was held at the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center courtroom on Feb. 24.
The new Advocacy Center courtroom will serve as a key component in placing UF Law at the forefront of legal advocacy education. The fully functional trial and appellate courtroom contains a 98-seat gallery, a bench for seven judges, a jury box, attorneys’ tables, judge’s chambers and a jury deliberation room.
“I hope with the facility here, the advocacy center, that it will become the go-to place for young law students who want to become trial lawyers and they certainly have the facility to do it,” said Fredric Levin, a renowned trial lawyer. “I have tried cases all over the country. I’ve never seen a more beautiful courtroom or a more well-equipped courtroom.”
The Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center and courtroom was made possible by donors including Fredric Levin and Teri Levin. Fredric Levin contributed $2 million to the center as the lead gift to this project and Teri Levin contributed a $1 million gift in honor of her late husband, Allen Richard Levin. Teri Levin’s contribution brought the total of Levin family gifts to the law school to almost $30 million, including state matching funds. Other donors who helped make the Advocacy Center possible include the Baynard Trust, the late Robert M. Montgomery of West Palm Beach and Robert Kerrigan of Kerrigan, Estess, McLeod & Thompson in Pensacola.
