Certification: a valuable tool for the attorney general's office.

• Author: Butterworth, Robert A.
• Position: Board certification

Every law firm, no matter its size, rises or falls on the professional reputation of its attorneys. Recognizing this, I set a goal when I became Florida's attorney general in early 1987 to have the office conduct itself less like a government agency and more like the people's law firm.

Our dealings with the public entities we represent are akin to those between any attorney and client. Like a private law firm, we must solicit and retain "clients." While F.S. Ch. 287 directs most executive agencies to use the attorney general's office when the attorney general determines the office has the staff and expertise to meet the agencies' legal needs, the statute provides numerous exceptions. For example, neither risk management litigation nor matters involving colleges and universities must be handled by the attorney general's office. Because the office is almost always more cost effective than outside private counsel, we recognized that it is in the public interest for the attorney general's office to convince agencies it can handle their legal needs better, quicker, and cheaper even when the agencies have the option of using outside counsel. In addition, the office's ability to obtain the resources to do its job depends largely on satisfying the ultimate client, the citizens of Florida through their legislature. For this reason, we determined that it is important to maintain an exceptional and measurable professional reputation.

With that objective in mind, it was easy to identify an effective avenue for establishing and maintaining our professional excellence and reputation: board certification. Under my direction and that of my chief deputy Richard E. Doran, the office placed a special value on board certification. In fact, the goals and objectives section of the agency's official long-range planning document, Objective 1B, reads, "Broaden scope of experience and specialization levels of legal staff," with success to be measured in part by the percentage of board certified attorneys. I am proud that by the time I left office in 2002, the attorney general's office boasted 36 board certified attorneys--almost 10 percent of the attorneys on staff. This acknowledged expertise is as broad as it is deep, with board certified attorneys in eight different specialized practice areas: antitrust and trade regulation, appellate practice, civil trial, criminal appellate, criminal trial, labor and employment law, real estate, and tax law.

Rule 6-3.5(c)(6)...