Foundation CEO Bruce Blackwell to receive 2016 Tobias Simon Pro Bono Award

Florida Bar news story Attorney Bruce B. Blackwell of Winter Park, a founding partner of King, Blackwell, Zehnder & Wermuth, P.A., in Orlando and now CEO/executive director of The Florida Bar Foundation, is the recipient of the 2016 Tobias Simon Pro Bono Service Award, the highest statewide pro bono award.

Video Spotlight: Saving Keith and Vickki’s Dream Home

  Keith and Vickki Jordan’s money woes started the way they do for many couples – with a job loss – and soon overtook them in a perfect storm of shrinking income and rising expenses that almost cost them their Jacksonville home. Not long after Vickki lost her job, Keith,

A long legal road leads to a permanent home for Brittney

  Brittney Carroll, 11, smiles broadly and extends her hand in greeting to welcome a visitor to her family’s Tallahassee farm, where she and her six siblings help care for a menagerie that includes dogs, cats, ponies, goats, chickens, rabbits, a donkey and a cow named Buttercream. Born prematurely and

Laid off legal aid attorney continued pro bono on case ending with $17.4 million verdict

by Nancy Kinnally To most Floridians the town of Felda in Hendry County is little more than an overlooked dot on a state map, but to five women who worked in the Moreno Farms packing house there it became their own little corner of Hell. Maria del Carmen Aguilar, one

Pro bono attorney helps families struggling with debt

Frank Eaton has been practicing large, complex Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases around the country since 1990, based first in New York and now in Miami. While attending a bankruptcy conference where the Chief Bankruptcy Judge extolled the importance of pro bono assistance for general consumers who need — but can

Crossing Borders—My Experience as a First Time Juvenile Immigration Lawyer  

When Dade Legal Aid/Put Something Back first asked for attorneys to take unaccompanied minor cases, I wasn’t sure I was the right lawyer for the job. Despite my history of public interest work, including early roots as a Federal Public Defender and a consistent pro bono practice over my thirty

Winning freedom from domestic violence

After 18 years of feeling like a prisoner in her own home and suffering – along with her six children – her husband’s constant abuse, Natasha De Synegub finally managed to leave after pro bono attorney Natalie Weech helped her devise a plan. Weech, herself a domestic violence survivor, represented

Andre Bryant becomes 15th man exonerated by Innocence Project of Florida

Andre Bryant was reunited with his family Oct. 1 after spending eight years in prison for a robbery he didn’t commit, making him the 15th innocent person to win freedom thanks to the Innocence Project of Florida. Using post-conviction DNA testing, the Innocence Project of Florida has worked since 2003

ACTL Fellows provide trial skills training for legal aid attorneys

by Doug Sachs Linda Smith, 48, her elderly mother and two teenage sons stood to lose their federally subsidized apartment after Jacksonville police found a marijuana plant on the family’s back patio, but before they would be evicted they would have their day in court. Such were the facts of

Garcia joins Foundation as director of pro bono

Former legal aid attorney Ericka Garcia has joined The Florida Bar Foundation staff to support local and statewide efforts to expand pro bono partnerships with bar associations, law firms, courts, law schools and legal aid organizations. As director of pro bono partnerships, Garcia will collaborate with The Florida Bar Standing

Medical-legal partnership answers veterans’ needs, changes lives

When Henry Wilson’s VA pension was cut from $1,000 to $65 a month due to clerical errors, the lost income put him into a downward spiral that only reversed when a young lawyer and fellow Army veteran intervened and got his benefits restored. Equal Justice Works Fellow Amanda Sejba, whose

Rule challenge restores millions in food stamps, mostly to elderly, disabled

Thomas Mayer, 86, lives alone in a two-bedroom, tin-roofed house in the woods of rural Calhoun County, Fla., where his only companion is a 2-year-old Labrador mix named Boy. Mayer, not his real name, does his own plumbing, air conditioning, electrical work and auto repair, enabling him to live on