William Schifino, Jr.: President of The Florida Bar.

• Author: Pudlow, Jan
• Position: Interview - Cover story

Wearing little blue blazers and bow ties, the young boys gathered in the courtyard for morning prayers at the Academy of the Holy Names in Tampa. Even as grade-schoolboys, they recognized that one classmate stood out as a leader.

His given name is William Schifino, Jr., but back then everyone called him Billy, and his closest buddies called him "Feenz."

"From day one at the boys academy, he came in very much self-possessed and as a leader," recalls childhood friend Jay G. Trezevant, who grew up to be an assistant U.S. attorney in Tampa.

"If a young person in the fourth grade could accurately describe a person of substance, we knew Billy was a leader. He was strong, fast, and played every sport. He was the guy in the class who stood up to bullies naturally."

Trezevant can remember two instances--once in the sixth grade and once in the eighth grade--when "Feenz" stood up to two bullies who were trying to pick fights with weaker students. The bullies backed down.

"Since we've become attorneys, he still just absolutely hates the bully.

That is really, really consistent with him," Trezevant said. "He is not at all different today than he was the day I met him, except that he's taller and further down the road."

Traveling that road as a successful business litigator and Tampa managing partner at Burr Forman, 56-year-old Schifino has arrived at the junction where he is ready to roll up his sleeves and serve as president of The Florida Bar.

Colleagues, friends, and family describe him foremost as a devoted family man who is high-energy, extremely competitive, exuberantly optimistic, deeply loyal, fun-loving, empathetic, and passionate.

"He is about as passionate and driven a person as you will ever meet," said his younger brother, John Schifino, also a partner at Burr Forman.

"This is a profession of passionate people; Type A's. It still shocks me how driven Bill can be. He is very passionate about his job. I like being a lawyer, but Bill loves being a lawyer. And that's why he got into bar service."

Bill Schifino's passion shines through when he describes his proudest moment as a lawyer. Years ago, he took a pro bono case representing a poor mother embroiled in a nasty divorce. Her husband accused her of abusing their three sons, and the state was trying to take away her children.

"She's probably 4-foot-10, 90 or 100 pounds. She's a peanut. I believed in my heart that she did not abuse anybody. When I drilled down, the substance of the abuse was a little red mark on one of the boy's neck that a little boy could have gotten on the playground. Her husband said she had done it. I remember it like it was yesterday. The boys were 8, 6, and 2, and now she's out of the house and the father has the boys."

Schifino was shocked when they lost at the administrative trial.

"Totally a miscarriage of justice. I appealed it to the Second DCA. We won!"

His eyes glisten with tears as Schifino tells how happy he was his client got to keep her children.

"I've never been accused of not being passionate," Schifino said. "My friends often make fun of how passionate I am. But I look back and remember the tears in her eyes. You look back at a mother losing custody of her three boys, for something you know is trumped up, and she didn't have two nickels to rub together. She is thinking, 'My God, how am I going to navigate through this swamp?'

"I wasn't going to give up until we won. It was wrong. Her husband was a big bully. And I don't like bullies. The law is the almighty equalizer. As long as you can get a lawyer in there fighting for you, it doesn't matter who has more money."

The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

There's another well-respected lawyer in Tampa named Bill Schifino, and that's Bill Schifino, Sr., the new Bar president's 83-year-old dad, who built his legal career specializing in issues related to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where he once worked.

If you want to understand how Bill Junior became such an ethical, hardworking lawyer, with a delightful sense of humor, friends say, look no farther than his dad.

"I was born in '33, the youngest of eight kids. I was the 'whoops.' In fact, the government acknowledged it by voiding Prohibition. They let us drink. And my father needed it," Bill Senior said with a hearty laugh.

He tells how his grandparents immigrated from Italy in the early 1890s and settled in a little town outside Providence, Rhode Island, where his grandfather built a water and sewer construction business and passed the company on to his son.

Like most families, the Schifinos took a big hit during the Great Depression, with Bill Senior's mom making the kids' clothes out of flour sacks. Bill Senior's dad lost his business, but put his blueprint-reading skills to good use at the Works Progress Administration, the New Deal agency that gave jobless folks work constructing public buildings and roads.

Bill Senior's maternal grandparents had a little farm outside of Riverside, east of Providence, so there was plenty of chickens and eggs to share.

During World War II, the older Schifino boys enlisted in the service, while their father worked overtime constructing "Liberty ships," designed for emergency construction by the U.S. Maritime Commission in World War II.

During this turbulent wartime, Bill Senior was still a little boy and was raised mostly by his mom.

Bill Senior rose to the top of his high school class and excelled at sports: hockey, football, and baseball. He played quarterback in football and captained the baseball team.

His confidence got a big boost when he was named Rhode Island's student athlete of the year. Skills as a starting shortstop got him a place on the baseball team at Yale University. Later, one summer after college, he played professionally for $20 a week for the "minor, minor" Milwaukee Braves, even though he loved the sport so much he would have done it for free.

Playing ball revealed the unfair Jim Crow laws. His undefeated high school football team had an opportunity to play a team in Virginia, but because two players on the Rhode Island team would not be allowed to play in the game, the team decided not to compete. It happened again in 1951 when they traveled to Wichita, Kansas, for a tournament and checked in to their hotel only to discover a black teammate named Charlie was missing and not allowed to stay with the team.

"Those things stuck in my mind growing up," Bill Senior said. So when he raised a family of his own, he taught his kids it was their responsibility to give something back, "not for monetary reasons, but for social reasons."

At Jesuit High School in Tampa, where the motto is "Men for Others," and the mantra is giving back, Bill Junior did community service at the McDonald's Training Center, a facility for mentally challenged adults. As a busy lawyer, he has given back to his community as a guardian ad litem; working with Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Greater Tampa; serving on the corporate board of Boys & Girls Club of Tampa Bay, Inc.; and serving as coach and president of the board of directors of Tampa Bay Little League, Inc.

"I cannot imagine a life without public service, and I look at this Bar service as public service," Bill Junior said. "Giving back. I love that. By the way, it's selfish because it makes me feel good."

When his son talked to him about wanting to be president of The Florida Bar, Bill Senior asked him what he wants to accomplish.

"He said to make the law more affordable for those people who can't afford it. Bill said he wants to get lawyers enthused about representing the indigent," Bill Senior said.

He's proud of his oldest child. But Bill Senior wouldn't give his son a job at his law firm. Actually, it happened the other way around.

"I had a specialized practice," Bill Senior said, "and that was not the direction he wanted to go. It was not an option, because I would not have hired him anyway. I wanted him to stand on his own two feet."

A decade ago, when Bill Senior's firm closed, he wasn't ready to retire. So Bill Junior invited his father to come join his firm as of counsel.

Asked how it is to work for his son, the managing partner of the office, Bill Senior cracks another joke: "If he gets on my back, I will write him out of the will."

Bill Junior said: "I never had to manage him. He still manages me. I still go to him when the proverbial poop hits the fan and say, 'Dad, what do you think?' I still seek his counsel."

Good Country Living

Because he was in the Army ROTC at Yale, Bill Senior served in the military for two years in Germany, before coming home to marry his childhood sweetheart, Lois, in 1958.

And because he missed by four months the benefits of free college tuition with the GI Bill, Bill Senior worked at the SEC, while going to law school at Georgetown University, two blocks away in Washington, D.C.

"To be honest, looking back, the only way I could do it was with Lois' help and the other married students doing it together, pushing ourselves," Bill Senior said.

In 1960, Bill Junior was born, described by his dad as "rambunctious, a little bit of a devil."

"God love him, Bill taught us how to be parents," said Lois, an only child of Irish descent, who graduated from Boston College, became a nurse with two master's degrees, and eventually taught nursing in Tampa and worked as a psychiatric nurse at the jail.

In 1962, now with two sons (Bill and Paul), Bill Senior had his law degree and was recruited by a banking investment firm who needed a lawyer in Jacksonville with SEC experience.

Four years later, the Schifinos now had three sons (Bill, Paul, and John), when Bill Senior established his own firm specializing in securities-related work. Instead of living in the city, they moved to small-town Seffner, near Brandon, on 10 acres surrounded by orange groves.

Bill Junior loved his little pinto horse, Choctaw, and he and a little neighbor girl would pack a lunch and ride their horses up and down the dirt...