Long before Justice C. Alan Lawson (’87) was appointed to the Florida Supreme Court, he contemplated careers in the military and medicine. As a high school student in Tallahassee, his goal was to become a pilot and he was a principal nominee to the U.S. Air Force Academy.
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Marlon Hill never expected to run for office, or become a lawyer for that matter. He did not anticipate that he would have an integral role in building a courtroom at a Miami middle school.
Two-thousand-seventeen marked Professor Charles W. “Chuck” Ehrhardt’s 50-year anniversary at FSU Law. In 1967, he packed all of his possessions into his red 1964 Ford Mustang and drove to Tallahassee to become the fourth professor to join the faculty. During his time at the College of Law, Ehrhardt has taught thousands of students.
As a shareholder at Coleman Yovanovich Koester in Naples, Edmond E. Koester handles high-end litigation matters, ranging from complex antitrust to construction defect cases and anything in between. At any given time, he has between 60 and 120 pending cases.
Washington, D.C. attorney Thomas Spulak (’82) began developing his expertise in government advocacy well before law school. During his formative years and in college, Spulak came to the realization that not everyone was protected equally.
D'Alemberte Professor and Associate Dean for Environmental Programs Shi-Ling Hsu is an expert in the areas of environmental and natural resource law, climate change, law and economics, and property. Prior to entering academia, Hsu was a senior attorney and economist for the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C.
As a registered pharmacist, Salesia Smith-Gordon contemplated returning to school to become a veterinarian or doctor. Her plans changed after a conversation with her mother, Jeraldine Williams, a 1981 graduate of the FSU College of Law. Today, Smith-Gordon has won numerous multimillion dollar verdicts and settlements for her clients at her own practice.
Before his passing in January 2017, Cody Fowler Davis was a proud father, accomplished trial attorney and author. Recognized as the #1 attorney in insurance law and plaintiff's personal injury litigation by Tampa Magazine (2016), Davis left an impact on the legal community.
Isidro “Sid” Garcia’s experiences as a journalist and part-time worker at UPS as a young adult led to a successful labor law practice in West Palm Beach. In 2004, Garcia opened his own practice, Garcia Law Firm, P.A., where he represents individual employees who have been mistreated in the workplace, primarily in wrongful termination and harassment claims.
Because he took an in-house position immediately after graduating from law school in 2001, Matt Rearden has never billed an hour. Since joining SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment in 2010, Rearden has served as associate general counsel, as vice president of business affairs and currently as senior business development officer.