Michael J. Higer: President of The Florida Bar.

AuthorBitar, Rawan
PositionInterview - Cover story

"Losing is not an option." That dogged philosophy fuels Michael Higer as a trial lawyer in a Miami courtroom, just as it did when he was a boy on the ballfield.

"I never quit, and I never give up," said Higer, the new president of The Florida Bar, who rose through the ranks after serving eight years on the Board of Governors and chairing all significant Bar committees.

Perseverance only begins to describe Higer during his 32-year career as a complex business litigator. He works quietly toward the greater good without caring to draw attention to himself.

"There are very few people that are so imminently qualified for this position without a hint of reservation," said former Bar President Greg Coleman, adding Higer could become one of the Bar's best presidents. "The lawyers of the state of Florida and the citizens of Florida are in great hands."

Higer once represented the CEO of a multibillion-dollar development company with projects in Los Angeles, New York, and Miami, in a brokerage dispute that lasted more than 10 years. A sales associate alleged the client was personally liable for commissions she claimed. The trial court on multiple occasions denied dispositive relief and a jury ruled against the CEO. Higer didn't give up. After more than a decade of litigation, the appellate court finally vindicated Higer's client by reversing and ruling in the CEO's favor.

In another case that called for Higer to go above and beyond the call of duty, Higer represented a small, Florida-based manufacturer of scientific instruments accused of patent infringement by an industry giant. After losing at trial, but while the case was pending on appeal, Higer began a nationwide investigation, including traveling to various parts of Texas, where he discovered prior art that the court agreed invalidated the patent and entered judgment for his client.

Now a partner with Berger Singerman, Higer's relentless pursuit of his goals developed early in life, playing outside with friends in a neighborhood in Westchester, South Miami Dade, where everybody knew everybody.

One sunny afternoon, young Higer raced backward to catch a flyball and fell into a bush. A sharp branch deeply pierced his leg. Despite the pain, Higer wanted to keep the ballgame going. As infection festered a year later, bits of wood had to be removed from the baseball lover's leg.

On yet another occasion, when younger brother Ron sliced his knee open on a sprinkler head during a backyard football game, later needing 15 stitches, Higer escorted his brother indoors, wrapped the laceration in towels, and headed back to the field.

"OK, let's get back in the game," Ron Higer remembers his driven brother saying. When their mother, Francine, discovered the pile of bloody towels on the floor, she came out hollering into the yard where the boys were playing, and rushed her youngest son to the emergency room.

Higer was raised by Jewish parents who provided a loving, Zionistic home. The family wasn't known to sit on the sofa waiting for the world to come to them.

"We went to the world and did what we had to do," Higer's mother, Francine, affirmed.

Higer knew if he wanted something, he could walk right out into the world and get it. He walked to public school, and in the afternoons, worked in after-school jobs. He was employed throughout his years at West Miami Junior High and Palmetto Senior High, and the University of Florida, mainly in kitchens washing dishes, bussing tables, and prepping food. The student took up positions as varied as working at a donut factory to a hardware store.

Leaving the house offered more rewards than sitting around, and in college, Higer earned enough money to buy a new sport/economy Plymouth Sapporo.

It was the least expensive car on the floor, but the salesman taught him how to drive the five-speed manual transmission before the college junior proudly drove off the lot in his first major purchase. Higer has been driving a stick shift ever since.

The lawyer enjoys shifting gears, feeling the road in the driver's seat, and he is just as fully engaged and involved in the law. The decision to become a lawyer came naturally to the new Bar president while growing up in the turbulent 1960s.

"Most people don't perceive being Jewish today as being a minority, or being someone who needs to be protected. But growing up Jewish in the 1960s, my parents, and certainly I, didn't feel like we were part of the majority," Higer said. "It's not about being high and moral. I've always had an affinity for the little guy. I've always felt that I've wanted to help someone who has been taken advantage of by a bully, or someone whose rights needed to be protected. I tend to take a stand even if I'm the only voice on the other side."

Higer's voice was stronger and sterner than his father's, who spoke in a whisper since age 13, when throat cancer surgery damaged his vocal cords. During his lifetime, Aaron Higer survived five cancers. Visitors seeking his sage advice sat around the family's close-quartered living room to share quandaries. No matter the softness of the man's voice, people listened. The hoarseness in his speech did not prevent the hardworking father from communicating displeasure toward misbehavior, and in those moments, the children understood him very clearly.

Aaron wanted to be a lawyer as a child, but was strongly discouraged because of that whisper. Although his boyhood dreams of arguing cases in a courtroom with a resounding voice were dashed by the devastating effects of cancer, his two children--eldest, Michael, and youngest, Pamela--both became lawyers. As president of The Florida Bar, Michael Higer's voice will now be heard loud and clear by more than 104,000 Bar members.

Much like his father, Higer's strength as a leader and trial lawyer is to speak without brashness, but rather in a calm and collected manner, to get his point across. "People respect his opinions because of that quiet confidence," said Morgan Stanley businessman, Eric Hersh. "It's a trait of good leaders."

In spite of enduring those malignant diagnoses, Aaron Higer was heavily involved in Everglades research. He enjoyed a rewarding career as a scientist for the federal government well into his 70s. Named the "Father of the Everglades" in a 2014 honorary doctorate from Florida Atlantic University, Aaron was a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and worked on complex projects, including for NASA. Accolades as a distinguished researcher in his field include the U.S. Department of Interior's Meritorious Service Award in 1993 and Distinguished Service Award in 2000. He passed away at age 80.

"My dad's glass was half full. Which is, 'Yes, I got all these cancers, but I survived all of them,'" Higer said of his beloved father, who he believes had the most beautiful crystal blue eyes on the planet. "My father was an amazing guy."

Francine views her accomplished husband as "a wonderful role model," and an intricate part of her eldest son. The homemaker began working when the children were in school as a real estate agent and interior designer.

The fun-loving mother occasionally started playful water fights in the kitchen. Just throwing water. Drying up the tile afterward was no problem. "I was a terrible instigator," she confesses with laughter, "praying nobody would fall."

In the 1960s, Miami didn't have a professional baseball team, but the Los Angeles Dodgers on television provided plenty of excitement--especially when star pitcher Sandy Koufax sat out a 1965 World Series game in observance of Yom Kippur. Being a traditional Jew since childhood has been important to the busy trial lawyer, who honors the Sabbath. His parents accompanied the children a half-mile walking distance to temple on weekends. On Fridays, the rabbi who lived down the street, knocked on the Higer's door to collect family members for prayer.

There was also plenty of intriguing literature in the home. At night, in peaceful quietude, the children switched on their little flashlights and read books in bed instead of sleeping.

"We all read a tremendous amount," Francine explained. "We're all very much into learning. It was just a natural thing in our household that learning wasn't even--you didn't think twice about it--you just did it." Although books packed the shelves in the cozy home, Higer occasionally plopped in front of the television to watch movies--and one in particular inspired his career in the law.

In the 1959 film based on a true story, Compulsion, famous lawyer Clarence Darrow, defended two despicable men who had committed a heinous crime in 1920s Chicago. Leopold and Loeb were rich, privileged, Ivy League-educated young men who murdered a child. The details of the incident were "just horrible," Higer remembers thinking as a boy, but yet he agreed there should be a fair trial and "each side ought to have someone absolutely fighting as hard as they could for their clients."

"Darrow, who had a distinguished career at that point in his life, and who could pick and choose his cases, took on that case, and his whole mission was just to save these boys from the electric chair, which he did, and that really appealed to me," Higer said.

"There was something that resonated with me about defending the defenseless regardless of whether they were rich or poor. Taking on that unpopular case. Taking on those unpopular people. Taking on that situation where all the odds were against you, and helping that person. I think my parents must have, just time and time again, really wondered about their son. I really liked the law."

It wouldn't be long before the passionate Dodgers' fan graduated high school and headed north to Gainesville, where he'd earn a bachelor's degree in English at UF. Just the first step toward his longtime goal of becoming a lawyer.

Bashert

Higer took seriously his father's advice to study accounting at Florida as a fallback in case the legal track didn't work out. It all ended up...

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