The Board of Governors could be asked as soon as soon as December to weigh recommendations for improving the way Florida’s 20 local professionalism panels informally resolve complaints.
West Palm Beach lawyer Kara Link told the Standing Committee on Professionalism on Thursday that plans are complete for a November 18 “Statewide LPP Required Meeting.”
“We’re excited about the November 18 event, and we’re going to summarize the takeaway and the recommendations and hopefully get that to the Board of Governors at their December meeting or their January meeting,” said Link, who chairs a SCOP subcommittee. “So, stay tuned, a lot of great stuff for the LPPs is right around the corner.”
The Bar panel will facilitate the meetings and the presentation of the LPP chairs’ recommendations to the Board of Governors. The Supreme Court will make the final determination.
Justices, in their order, tasked The Florida Bar with organizing the meeting, Link noted. It is being held pursuant to the 2023 opinion, In Re: Code for Resolving Professionalism Referrals, 367 So. 3d 1184 (Fla. 2023).
“Although the Court originally adopted the Code in 2013 (which was later amended twice), the 2023 Code that replaces the 2013 Code marks the first time that LPP chairs are required to meet to review and discuss the code and make any recommendations for change to the Florida Supreme Court,” Link said.
The meeting is scheduled from 8:30 a.m. to noon via Zoom and participation will be limited to the 20 LPP chairs or their designees pursuant to the opinion, Link said.
“The manageable size will allow the required participants to maximize their time and achieve the purpose of the Required Meeting — ‘to review this code and make any recommendations for change to the Florida Supreme Court.’”
Participants will be broken into three groups — two groups of seven, one group of six, with SCOP members serving as moderators.
The meeting will include a 1.0-hour CLE component for the LPP chairs based on a presentation by 13th Circuit Judge Carolyn Bell, who also serves as SCOP co-chair.
On Thursday, Bell played a few minutes of a video to give the subcommittee a sneak preview. It depicted a swarm of turtles in a cement pond uniting to upright another turtle as it flails on its back. Some subcommittee members applauded when the rescue succeeded.
“The working title is, ‘Always be a Turtle,’” Bell quipped. “You’re just going to have to listen to the presentation to understand the context.”
Board of Governors member Hilary Creary, who also chairs a local professionalism panel, monitored the subcommittee meeting.
“I am no longer on this committee, but I thought the work that it does is so important, that I thought I should show up,” she said. “Our circuit was one of the first to have an administrative order because of our amazing Chief Judge Jack Tuter.”
Link told Creary she was more than welcome. The meeting takes place in a month and a day, and there’s plenty of work to go around.
“And we’re very fortunate that we have two of those 20 [LPP] chairs serving as Board of Governors representatives, so we have great cross pollination,” Link said.
Original source can be found here.