Terry Russell President of The Florida Bar.

AuthorPudlow, Jan

"Caring and courageous with service and leadership in his soul."

In 1978, when Terrence Russell was a young lawyer and Nova was a young university, both were flung into a David v. Goliath battle that not only secured his career as a stellar trial lawyer but rescued the school from the brink of extinction.

And that's no exaggeration.

"Terry saved the university. Not only do I think highly of his legal skills but also as a man. He is ethical, and he loves the law," says Abraham Fischler, president of Nova University from 1970 to 1992, a former public member of The Florida Bar Board of Governors who also served on the Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission.

It was a riveting, high-profile trial that grabbed frontpage news in Ft. Lauderdale. The defendant, the permanent trustee of a trust set up by insurance millionaire Leo Goodwin, Sr., had refused to turn over a $14.5 million bequest to Nova University.

Money tied up in the trust was the barrier between the law school and full accreditation from the American Bar Association that had required Nova to construct a law center instead of having law classes scattered around campus. It was a particularly critical time for the survival of the entire Nova University, at the forefront of cutting-edge distance learning while foundering financially.

"That school would be dead today were it not for the fact that Terry was able to get that money collected ... every penny that we said was owed," agrees Carl Schuster, who hired Russell to join his Ft. Lauderdale firm in 1970 that is now Ruden McClosky Smith Schuster & Russell.

When Schuster gave the Nova case to his younger associate, little did he realize it would swallow nearly two years full-time of Russell's days, as he litigated six lawsuits at the state, federal, and appellate levels. In the end, the case reaped $20 million for Nova, earned Russell his status as named partner, and resulted in the disbarment of the defendant, who was a lawyer.

Aided only by a paralegal and occasional help from an associate, Russell, a nine-year practitioner at the time, took on a cadre of lawyers whom the recalcitrant trustee had hired from major Miami firms.

"I was so young that I didn't appreciate the significance of the case until it was over. It was a monumental legal battle," Russell recalls of the biggest case of his career.

"Every time you were in court, the media were there watching it. The courts were under scrutiny for the way they were handling it. I took it and really ran with it. Wore 'em down. It helped me believe in myself a lot."

What kept him going, he says, was "just an absolute belief in the justice of the cause."

It's that same tenacity, courage, and commitment to a cause he believes in that Russell will bring to the presidency of The Florida Bar, say those who know him best.

"Terry is a street fighter," says his wife, Mary Kay. "He does not back away from confrontation--ever."

Raymond Solomon, Russell's cousin and best man in his wedding 35 years ago, says jokingly: "If it weren't for Mary Kay, Terry probably would be a boxer. He's a boxer in court--with words."

"He is very passionate, street smart with a sharp wit, worldly wise and political," says daughter Cristy Russell, 27, a lawyer at Rogers Towers in Jacksonville.

"What's always impressed me is when he finds something important to him, he'll stick to it with tenacity. He's very honest and forthright about things he feels strongly about. You don't want to be on the other side of him."

Bruce Goorland, a partner and long-time friend who chose Russell to be godfather to one of his children, remembered when former Florida Supreme Court Justice Ray Ehrlich introduced Russell, the president-elect of the Bar, at the June 2000 annual meeting.

"When you look at him, you think he's a big gruff guy. But he's just as gentle as a little St. Bernard," said Ehrlich, who got to know Russell when he helped in his 1984 merit retention campaign, and they became good friends.

"Terry carries a lot of weight in his work, and he moves with agility and grace.... He has the vision and the desire to take the Bar to new heights."

Soon thereafter, a litter of stuffed St. Bernards suddenly appeared on Russell's desk, along with a St. Bernard engraved atop his letterhead stationery.

"Terry has a good heart," Goorland says. "But he is a formidable adversary, and I don't think any of his adversaries would think of him as a St. Bernard. More like a rottweiler."

"Very street smart and savvy," says his 25-year-old son Greg, in medical school at the University of South Florida. "He will not be shy. He has a habit of coming to things and leaving them better than before. He takes the best and makes it better. He has service and leadership in his soul. That's what's driving him."

That fighting spirit, driven by compassion for the less fortunate and passion for his profession, is what propelled 56-year-old Russell to try again for the Bar presidency after a close defeat by 250 votes cast out of 21,000 in 1991.

"It was a very tough experience to lose a race that probably was the closest in The Florida Bar's history," Russell says. "But, interestingly enough, it provided the platform for this opportunity, because I discovered 10 years later that all the friends I had made then, all the people who believed in me then, still do now. And they wanted me to do this again. It made for a very powerful and convincing show of support that I think had a lot to do with me securing the office now."

Russell was poised to campaign, his brochures printed and his website up, but he was relieved to learn he got the job of leading Florida's lawyers unopposed for the 2001-2002 Bar presidency.

It may well be a blessing in disguise that he lost the race for Bar president the first time around, many say, as Russell's political savvy will serve the Bar well as the independence of the profession and the judiciary continue to face increasingly bitter attacks in the legislature.

"The timing right now, with the different situations that the Bar is facing, makes this a much better time for him; for the gifts that he has," says Mary Kay. "He loves the political arena. He's very good at it. You tend to love what you're good at. He's very good also at coming to solutions. He's very good in a crisis. He thinks on his feet."

Says friend and former Board of Governors member Austin Peele of Lake City: "I think he will be a better president today than he would have been 10 years ago. I think he will serve quite admirably. He will give us good mature leadership that will help us through some difficult times."

And Russell agrees: "It's much more challenging now to deal with a very changed Florida demography. Then, it was a very strong Democratic state. Now, it's a moderately Democratic state with independent voters in control and mostly Republicans in office. A lot of people have told me they're happy I'm here now, because of what they perceive to be my aptitude for politics."

His voice fills with passion when he describes his dismay that proposed legislation in the House would dramatically politicize the judiciary and gut the Bar.

"I don't think you horse-trade on an issue like that. The response I got from them is, `Well, we're doing some horse-trading so we didn't have to vote on an even worse bill.' How many times can they cut your head off? A threat to judicial independence is a threat to your professional life. How can you ever support something like that? You can horse-trade with things that are not vital. But don't horse-trade with a core issue of your profession," Russell says.

"I believe strongly in the value of an independent and impartial judiciary and the long-term importance that has played to our democracy. I'll fight for it, figuratively, to my dying breath. I will fight for it--whatever it takes."

A Dramatic Contrast

Russell's impressive sundrenched offices in downtown Ft. Lauderdale fill five floors of a high-rise, with a panoramic view of the Atlantic Ocean. Andy Warhol's signed prints of famous faces look down from the walls of the lobby. It's a dramatic contrast to the humble building that housed the four-lawyer firm when he was hired in 1970 to work with Don McClosky, Carl Schuster, Elliot Barnett, and Hank Schmerer (the latter two now deceased).

"They had one thing in common: They were all Jewish, and they couldn't get a job in this community because they were Jewish," Russell says. "Here are these four Jewish guys hiring a Lebanese boy who is Catholic! And it never crossed their minds or mine."

In the next three decades, Russell built his reputation as a complex business litigator while the firm grew to 185 lawyers in nine offices.

"I really believe in the system very, very much. I am infinitely proud to be part of it. I still pinch myself when I realize how far I've come through the profession to have the privilege to serve as president of the Bar. The background I came from as a kid, I never thought I could achieve this much."

Russell was born in September 1944, before World War II ended, and while his father, a D-Day veteran, was still overseas. Hardworking, blue-collar parents raised by immigrants taught him by example that "the only way to accomplish anything and to achieve a goal was by working for it. Nobody was going to hand it to me."

Both sets of grandparents immigrated from the Middle East, his maternal grandparents from a small village in the mountains of southern Lebanon, one of the few remaining Christian enclaves. His father's father was given the American name "Russell" at Ellis Island.

His other grandfather died when his mother was about six months old, from the great 1918 influenza epidemic that killed 20 million people. Though his mother was valedictorian of her high-school class, she missed a great opportunity to go to college and stayed home to...

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