NEW FLORIDA BAR HEAD AIMS HIGH WITH MAJOR STRUCTURAL REVIEW

With just a one-year term to accomplish his goals, the leader of the nation’s third-largest mandatory bar has made a structural review of Florida’s 115,000-lawyer regulator a top priority.

The organizational x-ray ordered by Michael Fox Orr has been labeled “ambitious,” even by his supporters. He acknowledged that evaluating the committees, sections, and other aspects of the sprawling organization before a fall meeting on proposed changes will require significant work.

“I’m looking at the bones of the bar, what we can change to be better,” said Orr, the managing partner at Orr|Cook in Jacksonville. “We’re excited, there’s a lot to do.”

The bar’s board of governors is grappling with an annual budget projecting a roughly $5.4 million shortfall they’re addressing with reserves and some increased charges to keep dues flat. Meanwhile the organization’s critics, including sitting State Supreme Court Justice Adam Tanenbaum, have called on the group to narrow its operations.

An overhaul might align with what Tanenbaum wants, and also help the organization avoid lawsuits that other mandatory state bars have faced from lawyers claiming bar stances allegedly violate members’ First Amendment rights, said one former member of The Florida Bar Board of Governors who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal issues.

In an organization with so many different purposes — from lawyer discipline to networking — the participation can be staggering. More than 2,000 bar members serve on the organization’s 74 standing committees — and that doesn’t include board committees, grievance committees, or unlicensed practice of law circuit committees.

The standing committees range from a panel that advises attorneys on acceptable advertising practices to one for mentoring new attorneys, as well as dozens overseeing certifications and rules for various courts. There are also roughly two dozen sections and divisions for special practice areas — such as tax, entertainment, and animal law — that count more than 33,000 members.

Brian Burgoon, an Atlanta-based lawyer who has been on the bar’s board of governors since 2000, said a more thorough look at bar organization would be beneficial.

“Set ambitious goals,” he said, noting past reviews took a piecemeal approach partially due to the one-year term each president gets. “Hopefully, we’ll be in good shape.”

The overarching drive behind Orr’s push is what he calls “timeliness,” which boils down to making the organization more efficient and nimble.

He points to the speed at which the bar can move when resources, especially staff, are freed up to take action.

Roughly a year ago a Jacksonville-area judge called him up lamenting how novice criminal practitioners were struggling and wasting time creating jury instructions. The judge suggested Florida create something akin to an instruction builder you find in some federal courts; bar staff jumped on the recommendation, and this June a free-to-use jury instruction builder went live for all practitioners.

That kind of deftness is something Orr said he thought about often when it took him “in excess of 10 full business days” to appoint people to myriad committees when he started his term.

An example of an area that will get close review is the bar’s 27 certification programs, which set up exams and courses for lawyers seeking a special status as an expert in areas of law from aviation to education law.

“We have a couple where I don’t know we’re getting the applications we need,” he said. “If we’ve got an area that only 10, 15 people are a part of and nobody else is joining it, and we’re not getting new people every year applying for it, that’s a problem.”

His goal is to start implementing changes near the end of this year, and keep pushing until he hands off leadership in mid-2027.

“I don’t want to give the impression that we just want everybody to just make a change tomorrow to make a change,” he said. “But we don’t want to sit on it for a year.”

Former bar president Roland Sanchez-Medina Jr. said the timeline was “extremely aggressive,” but doable and worthwhile.

“Most organizations have things that have just been done a certain way year after year and could take a fresh look,” said Sanchez-Medina, a partner at Sanchez-Medina, Gonzalez, Lage, Gomez & Machado. “I can’t imagine in 2026 that there’s not a better way of doing things.”