Reflections on my year as bar president.

• Author: Diner, Jesse H.
• Position: Florida Bar - President's page

As I look back on my year as your Florida Bar president, I am deeply touched by the respect shown for the office, as I seized every opportunity to travel the state and spread the word about four top issues:

* Making sure the judicial branch is adequately funded;

* Advocating the Bar Legal Needs of Children Committee's position that abused and neglected children need lawyers to represent them in court;

* Expounding on the merits of e-filing in Florida's courts through an integrated computer system;

* Extolling the virtues of the "One" campaign launched by the Bar's Pro Bono Legal Services Committee, where the premise is simple: Why not take on one case? One client. One attorney. One promise.

Sometimes, I was accompanied by my wife and law partner, Adele Stone, who is president of The Florida Bar Foundation, the Bar's charity organization. At a time when IOTA funds are shrinking, her message was that people should consider making a charitable donation to the Foundation to build its endowment.

From the Pensacola News-Journal to the Miami Herald, I visited 14 newspaper editorial boards across the state, often accompanied by Chief Justice Peggy Quince, as well as chief circuit judges and current and former Bar Board of Governors members from the newspapers' local areas.

The chief justice and I were like a tag team, as the two of us passionately stressed both the importance of protecting a fair and impartial judiciary and making sure the third branch of government is adequately funded.

Sitting in a roomful of journalists asking questions was a new perspective for me, and I believe they truly listened. They wrote their own columns and stories and invited op-ed pieces on our issues.

A unique experience was addressing a nonlawyer audience at the Rotary Club in Gainesville, at the invitation of Al Alsobrook, a public member of the Bar Board of Governors.

First up at the podium were a former Navy captain and his wife who had lost a son in Afghanistan. That was a tough act to follow, but I put the script aside and had a good conversation about court funding.

You could have heard a pin drop as the Rotarians intently listened to me. The first question from the audience was: "Can a judge in Florida hold the legislature in contempt for not funding the judicial branch?"

While I answered that was not a remedy, I was impressed that everyday people not in the legal profession really get it when it comes to the importance of funding our courts sufficiently so...