Barnett will chair the firm's 24-member board of directors, which sets policy for the 1,261-lawyer, 32-office international firm, while litigator Howell "Hal" Webster Melton Jr. begins a five-year term as managing partner.
Melton, 51, who has moved from Orlando to the firm's New York office, replaces interim managing partner Bob Feagin, who took over the firm's leadership when Bill McBride left to run for governor last year after 10 years of managing the firm.
Barnett, 55, a past president of the American Bar Association and the firm's first woman lawyer when she was hired in 1973, says her decision was strictly personal. "I knew I had a strong, solid base of support," Barnett says. "I spent six weeks intensely visiting with the lawyers in the firm talking about my vision and goals and ... I came to the realization that if I wanted to accomplish my vision of taking the firm up to another level, I could not do that as managing partner. I was afraid I would spend every day in my office taking care of administrative details and I would never get out of my office."
Barnett says she told only a few of her closest friends of her decision two days before the election, then announced the decision to the firm the next day at a candidate's forum, saying she preferred to take the director's job. "I didn't even tell Chesterfield Smith," the firm's patriarch, Barnett says. "You could hear an audible gasp."
Barnett's new position does not carry the same authority as the job of managing partner, who oversees the firm's day-to-day operations and has final authority on all issues of compensation and management. But she says she considers the two positions "co-equal" and has no regrets. "I'm one of two people running Holland & Knight. I'm in a position I chose," says Barnett, who in 1998 was named one of the 50 most influential women lawyers in the country by the National Law Journal.
Barnett also expects the chairperson's job to evolve to have broader authority and responsibility for setting firm policy. "During Bill McBride's era, the board of directors was really more of a sounding board for Bill," Barnett says. "The role ... has changed in the past couple of years ... increasingly setting policy for the firm."
Glass ceiling
Lingering in the wake of Barnett's decision is the unanswered question of what effect a successful bid for managing partner might have had on the glass ceiling for women lawyers at law firms.
A recently released report by the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession cites studies that show men are "twice as likely as similarly qualified women to obtain partnerships."
A study by the National Association for Law Placement found that women accounted for about 16% of law firm partners in 2001. Florida's average was slightly higher, with about 17%, an average that was boosted by numbers in Miami, where 20% of partners are women. The study found the Tampa-St. Petersburg area lagging at 14.5%.
The study did not look at law firm management. "It is a small club," acknowledges Rhea Law, president and chief executive of 175-lawyer Fowler White Boggs Banker in Tampa and the only woman in the state managing a large law firm.
Barnett says she knows that her decision not to seek the managing partner's job at Holland & Knight will disappoint some women. But, she says, "I couldn't be happier about where I've ended up."
Securities Law
BARRED!
Demand for Florida securities lawyers is picking up in the wake of a recent Florida Supreme Court declaration that out-of-state lawyers can't represent clients in securities arbitration proceedings in Florida unless they are members of the Florida Bar.
The opinion has left some clients facing the prospect of having to switch lawyers in midstream and has Florida securities lawyers fielding telephone calls from anxious lawyers and brokerages all over the country.
"We've gotten inquiries from clients who have questions about whether their in-house lawyers can perform certain functions," says Bennett Falk, a securities partner in the Miami office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius who represents brokers and dealers in securities arbitrations.
The opinion finds West Palm Beach lawyer Albert A. Rapoport, a 40-year lawyer who is admitted to practice in Washington, D.C., but not in Florida, guilty of the unlicensed practice of law for representing customers in arbitration proceedings against securities brokers and dealers. The case was brought by the Florida Bar's unlicensed practice of law (UPL) division.
"It's really a public protection issue," says Florida Bar UPL counsel Lori Holcomb. Out-of-state lawyers, she says, "have not met Florida's requirements, and more importantly, they're not bound by Florida's ethics laws."
Clients who are the victim of unethical or incompetent representation by out-of-state lawyers have very little recourse, she says. Some state Bar associations won't pursue a complaint against a lawyer if the alleged mis-behavior occurred outside of their jurisdiction.
A Florida Bar committee is currently considering a rule that would allow out-of-state lawyers to get temporary authority to represent a client on a specific matter if they agreed to be bound by the state's ethics rules.
Briefly . . .
The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that Pensacola County court Judge Patricia Kinsey will get to keep her job but must pay $50,000 in fines for promising voters a prosecution-friendly approach to the job during her 1998 campaign.