Chesterfeld Smith, America's Lawyer.

• Author: Hill, Miriam
• Position: BOOKS

By Mary Adkins

Mary Adkins' America's Lawyer (2020) is the long-awaited, riveting biography of Chesterfield Smith, a Florida lawyer and one of the modern era's most influential public citizens. Winner of the 2020 Rembert Patrick Award, the book does what no prior work on its subject has achieved: It has brought Smith to life. It is impossible to list every prior tribute to Smith, but these from The Florida Bar News in 2017 [https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-news/remembering-chesterfield-smith-americas-lawyer/] and 2003 [https://www.floridabar.org/the-flor-ida-bar-journal/chesterfield-smith-americas-lawyer/], and Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation (1998 Random House) are worth mentioning.

All agree: Smith was truly America's lawyer, embodying the very American values of human equality and the rule of law--the values imbued in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. As president of The Florida Bar, and later, the American Bar Association, Smith effectively transformed both organizations into powerful forces for good.

Adkins, a master legal skills professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law and Florida constitutional scholar (and author of Making Modern Florida), is as engaging and entertaining as she is informative.

Drawing on meticulous research and intimate interviews with Smith's family, friends, and mentees, Adkins takes us within the halls of Holland, Bevis & McRae (later Holland & Knight), the firm Smith founded, but which, per Smith's request, would never bear his name. We learn of Smiths' insistence, and others' resistance, to the idea that a for-profit law firm should staff full-time pro bono attorneys and pay them the same rate as billable attorneys.

Smith's guiding philosophy, upon which the Holland & Knight commitment and several enduring legal service programs are...