My path to becoming a trial lawyer began far from Florida courtrooms. Before practicing law, I traveled extensively and worked in legal systems outside the United States. I worked at an international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, earned a master’s degree in Madrid, and spent time volunteering in Medellín, Colombia. Those experiences shaped how I understand justice systems and the people caught inside them.
One of the most formative periods came in Alice Springs, Australia. There, I clerked in the Outback and traveled village to village by bush plane with a judge. I saw Aboriginal communities navigating a criminal justice system that often failed to understand them. Watching marginalized people face powerful institutions with limited representation made clear where advocacy matters most. It is about restoring balance when the system is stacked against individuals.
Along the way, I lived out of a backpack, learned Spanish, and traveled through Southeast Asia. I scuba dived, surfed, and climbed volcanoes. More importantly, I learned how to listen to people from very different walks of life. Building trust across cultures and circumstances is a skill that still defines my work today.
Earlier in my career, before building my practice in Florida, I worked at the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, part of a long-held belief that a lawyer should be woven into the community he serves rather than standing apart from it.
I later cut my teeth trying cases as a public defender in Florida. That experience showed me what happens when real people are placed up against the full force of the government, with their freedom, licenses, and livelihoods at stake.
Today, I represent people at some of the most critical moments of their lives. I also partner with other attorneys on complex, high-stakes DUI cases where forensic science and technical detail can make or break the defense. My work centers on careful analysis of evidence, close scrutiny of procedures, and holding the government to its burden.
Where I actually am. I am in court every weekday, usually morning and afternoon. I am at the Pinellas County Justice Center in Clearwater every week and often on more than one day, and I appear throughout the Sixth Judicial Circuit as well as in Manatee, in Sarasota including the Venice courthouse, and in Hillsborough, where I began as an Assistant Public Defender trying cases in front of juries.
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My practice is built in the courtroom. I came up as a public defender in Florida’s Thirteenth Judicial Circuit, where I tried numerous cases and cross-examined witnesses constantly, with a person’s freedom on the line every time. That is a different kind of training than most lawyers get. Criminal dockets go to trial, while civil cases overwhelmingly settle, so insurance defense lawyers and many plaintiff lawyers rarely see a jury. I have spent real time in front of one. When the other side knows a case will be tried, and tried well, it changes what that case is worth. That is the advantage I bring to an injured client.
On the plaintiff side, my background includes trucking, auto, and premises liability cases, with a heavy emphasis on premises. I am a member of the American Association for Justice, the Florida Justice Association, and the Tampa Bay Trial Lawyers Association, and I have completed two of the Florida Justice Association’s flagship programs, the Christian D. Searcy Voir Dire Institute and the Al J. Cone Trial Advocacy Institute, along with attending the association’s ongoing seminars. For my premises work, I am a member of the National Association of Premises Liability Attorneys and attend its continuing legal education and seminars. Since starting my own firm, I have co-counseled with highly experienced trial lawyers and learned an enormous amount from them, and I study trial tactics continually, including watching the top trial lawyers in the country try their cases on CVN. I represent injured people against insurance companies directly.
I am one of only six attorneys in Florida, and just over 100 nationwide, designated as a Forensic Lawyer-Scientist by the Chemistry and the Law Division of the American Chemical Society. I also hold credentials from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as both a practitioner and an instructor in Standardized Field Sobriety Testing, and I have completed extensive forensic science training in chromatography, toxicology, pharmacology, and blood testing methodology. I am a member of the DUI Defense Lawyers Association and the National College for DUI Defense, where I serve on national task forces focused on trial advocacy and forensic chemical testing devices. Over my career I have handled complex criminal cases involving DUI, violent offenses, drug charges, sex crimes, homicide, RICO, racketeering, and white-collar fraud.
The criminal and forensic work does not sit apart from the injury work; it feeds it directly. The science I use to take apart a breath or blood test in a DUI case is the same science that proves impairment in a drunk-driving lawsuit. The criminal procedure and evidence I know from the defense side sharpen a negligent security case, where foreseeability and the record are everything. White-collar defense is built on mountains of documents and technical and financial detail, which is the same work a serious injury or medical case demands, and it carries straight into cross-examining the defense’s experts, which is where many injury cases are won or lost. Criminal practice also trains a specific skill: every new charge means learning a new area of law and a new body of facts cold, fast, and well enough to try it. That habit of mastering an unfamiliar subject on my feet is exactly what personal injury work asks for, and it is why I picked it up quickly and take it seriously.
I have been recognized as a National Trial Lawyers Top 40 Under 40 for Criminal Defense, named a Super Lawyers Rising Star from 2024 to 2026, chosen as a 2025 Top Lawyer by Tampa Magazine, and recognized as the Silver Winner of Tampa’s Best in 2025. I am also Lead Counsel Verified for Criminal Defense. I have also been named an Elite Lawyer for DUI and criminal defense every year since 2024, and I hold a 10.0 out of 10 rating on both Justia and Avvo, based on reviews from fellow attorneys. I am also a published author of four plain-English books for Floridians: Arrested for DUI in Florida, Hurt in a Florida Car Crash, Hurt on Someone Else’s Property, and Hurt in a Florida Nursing Home, all free through this site. I also wrote The Florida DUI Trial Manual, a working reference for lawyers rather than for the people charged, on reading the State forensic science and challenging it at trial.
Outside the courtroom, I write on criminal procedure and constitutional rights for The Paraclete, the magazine of the St. Petersburg Bar Association, and I provide legal commentary for national and local media, including Court TV, ABC News Live, and NBC, CBS, and FOX affiliates across the country. I also serve on the National College for DUI Defense’s National Task Force committee on alcohol and drug testing devices, the machines at the center of the cases I defend.
Through every case, criminal or civil, I bring preparation, precision, and integrity to the people I represent.
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