THE CAPTAIN REPORTS:
GOVERNOR DESANTIS & HIS RECORD ON JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS .... AND NEW LAWYERS JOIN THE RANKS OF THE FLORIDA BAR .......
Last week I reported to my loyal readers that three new judges* were appointed in Miami-Dade County among a grand total of 20 new judges appointed throughout the State by Gov. DeSantis on September 16th. Following my post, there was a decent amount of chitter chatter on the local list serv which we will not quote from directly. But the gist of the chatter was that, in the patch of 20 new judges, Gov DeSantis included two, yes two criminal defense practitioners, and that we should somehow be excited because our fine Governor has finally seen the light after being in office for 32 months and finally recognized the fact that a criminal defense lawyer can actually make for a fine trial court judge.
Let’s be clear and set the record straight. DeSantis’ record of judicial appointments has been abysmal. There is a reason why DeSantis does not fear losing at the appellate court level when a trial court judge in Tallahassee rules the Governor’s mask Order to be unconstitutional. He knows that every single judge sitting on the 1st DCA is a Republican appointee and, as DeSantis predicted, they reversed the trial court judge’s ruling faster than you can say the word “ivermectin”. The trial court appointments made by DeSantis also reflect only one kind of judge - one that has somewhere on their resume the initials “ASA”, “AUSA”, or “AAG”.
The current numbers are staggering when you consider them from the lens of a criminal defense practitioner, or, better yet, from the eyes of the citizens of our great state - many of whom may someday appear before one of those trial court judges.
Governor DeSantis loves to cite his record of diversity in his judicial appointments. His appointments to the bench have been anything but diverse. (Contrast that with President Biden's first eight months in office. On Monday, the Senate confirmed another Biden appointee as an U.S. appeals court judge - Veronica Rossman; Judge Rossman becomes one of only eight appeals court judges in the country who have experience as a public defender. Biden is responsible for naming four of those appointees. Read the full story here.).
Between January of 2019 and September of 2021, Governor Ron DeSantis has appointed at least 148 judges to the Florida Supreme Court, Appellate Court, Circuit Court, and/or County Court bench. Of those 148 judges, at least 93 of them (63%) have the “ASA”, “AUSA”, and/or “AAG” on their resume. Contrast that with the fact that only 9 of his 148 appointees (6%) had the letters “APD” and/or AFPD” on their resumes. Of the 93 appointees, 57 of them were actually employed as an ASA, AUSA, or AAG at the time of their appointment, while only TWO (2) of the nine defense appointees were working as an APD or AFPD at the time of their appointment.
NEW ATTORNEYS JOIN YOUR FLORIDA BAR
The test scores are in and please welcome another 1,483 attorneys to The Florida Bar. The actual numbers may end up being even higher. The July results include: (UPDATED/CORRECTED)
FIRST TIME TEST-TAKERS STATS ONLY
2,285 applicants sat for the Bar exam for the first time; (3,343 applicants overall took the Bar exam; 1,058 of them had taken the test one or more times before. It is not clear how many of those 1,058 passed the exam).
1,637 of those applicants passed the Bar exam
1,483 have been approved for admission by the Florida Supreme Court while the other 154 have hired Brian Tannebaum to find out why they were not yet approved.**
The top law school pass rates for FIRST TIME test takers:
FIU (again) at 88.8%
UM - 82.5%
UF - 81.3%
The bottom three:
St. Thomas - 50.8%
Florida Coastal - 53.3%***
Florida A&M - 56.8%
*The Eleventh Judicial Circuit currently has a total of 121 judges including 48 that are male and 73 that are female. The breakdown includes: in Circuit Court 34 male and 43 female; in County Court 14 male and 30 female.
**Just Kidding about Mr. Tannebaum, although we all know how fine an attorney Brian is in that field of practice. No cash nor a bottle of Opus One was provided to the Captain by said Tannebaum in exchange for this message.
***Florida Coastal lost their ABA accreditation and will cease to exist as a law school after 2023.
Captain4Justice@gmail.com
12 comments:
Hi. There are often so many snarky comments on this blog, so I thought I'd share something off topic. Big thanks to Rumpole and Captain for your energy in making this blog happen. You are both very well written and thoughtful, and although you have great power by virtue of your anonymous ability to reach such a large audience, you both have used such power in a measured and responsible way.
Captain, compiling the information you compile must be tedious, so thank you for your hard work.
Rumpole, I really enjoy your political / social commentary. What is refreshing for me is that I feel that my views align nearly perfectly with your views. I often think that if we had met each other outside the blog, we'd be great friends.
Although the blog is really great as is, I'll share one suggestion that would make the blog more enjoyable from at least one reader's perspective: moderation of the identity of anonymous commentators. I can't help but think that when there are multiple, successive negative comments about a judge, for example, the comments are being posted by the same person (perhaps with a personal grudge or a political interest). When readers see 10 successive negative comments about someone, it can really hurt that person's reputation. Perhaps reputational harm based on volume of negative comments is warranted when 10 different people feel the way they do, but it is not warranted (based on volume of negative comments alone) when the same person posts all the comments. One potential solution might be to require all commentators to post under an email address. It can still be anonymous, but it will help identify comments posted by the same commentator. Additionally, it will require more work (registration of multiple email addresses) for a single commentator to post multiple comments for political reasons or due to a personal grudge, and 10 negative comments from 10 different first-time anonymous commentators will carry less weight than 10 separate comments from established anonymous commentators.
Feel free not to post this, and the purpose of my post is to compliment Rumpole and Captain. Great work.
How does the bottom-most FL law school (with the fewest grads passing the bar) have a higher bar passage rate than the general population of bar takers?
It must mean that out of state law school bar takers just absolutely tanked the test?
If the ABA had at least one testicle they would recognize that the country is filled with exploitative law schools, only too happy to collect tuition fortified by federal loans (non-dischargable in bankruptcy), in order to graduate JDs who cannot pass a bar exam, who will not work as lawyers, and who will be stuck with student loans for twenty years.
Real talk -- there are far too many lawyers and the profession is bleeding. There are far too many law students and as long as school admins get paid, no one cares about entire generations crippled by debt.
We need leadership courageous enough to call out the scam, and to shutter most law schools. The undergrads with a <150 LSAT who complain should be told, "you will not pass the bar, you will not work as a lawyer, and if you somehow do, your salary will be under $45k. (Thanks Carlos and Kathy!) We have just freed you from the 100k loan you will spend decades trying to pay back."
The university admins who lose law school bucks should be told to pound sand.
The AMA protects its members and the profession. The ABA??
What the heck is FIU doing to nail the top bar passage rate for seven straight years? I would assume it is some bar prep course in your final semester.
What is your source for this?: "1,637 passed the Bar exam (49% of all test-takers)"
Given the passing percentages for Florida law schools (the worst of which is over 50%) a 49% passage rate doesn't appear correct.
Found the error! Total test takers is not 3343, it's 2285. So 1637 passing is a passage rate of 71.6%
https://www.floridasupremecourt.org/content/download/788827/file/09-20-2021-FBBE-Full-Press-Release.pdf
"Trust, but verify." - Ronald Reagan
709 yes thanks for correcting another poorly argued post by captain covid.
10:04 pm: I may stand corrected then. But where is that data available? I don’t see it on either the Florida Supreme Court or Board of Bar Examiners site.
You can find the aggregate Bar results from 2012 to present at https://www.floridasupremecourt.org/Bar-Scores/Florida-Bar-Exam-Results-Comparisons.
St. Thomas grad here. I am thankful to St. Thomas for giving me a chance. So, it hurts me to say this, but St. Thomas needs to go. FIU ate their lunch. Nova and A&M probably need to go too, but the argument is strongest for St. Thomas since it is in Miami-Dade along with two other law schools. There are too many lawyers and not enough good work to go around for the bottom tier(s).
This isn't just a problem of the economics of student loans, etc. (although it goes hand-in-hand with the problem), instead, what ends up happening is that desperate lawyers who can't find good cases end up doing foolish and/or desperate things: they take cases on the margins of merit (or with no merit); they "borrow" from trust accounts; or they do any number of other shady shit that we read about in the disciplinary news section of the Fl. Bar newspaper.
Thinning the heard is not just about making sure that lawyers get rich - its about mitigating the conditions that lead to unethical behavior.
7:38 am: at the link you provided, for July 2021 I see only the data for first-time test takers. Where did you get the aggregate number? Thanks.
10:25: the ABA is a great nationwide voluntary bar association. They try to do great things. People who want to make shabby things the norm do not cooperate with this. Such as President Trump ignoring ABA ratings for prospective federal judicial appointments. What say you Florida Supreme Court about refusing credit for ABA CLE courses?
Post a Comment