Reasonably Safir is my show about Florida criminal and injury law. Most weeks it is a walk through what the appellate courts handed down and what it actually changes for a case on your desk. Some weeks it is one issue taken apart from both sides, argued as hard as I can argue each one. And now and then it is a story from the road that got me here.
It is written and hosted by me, Rory Safir. The caselaw episodes land every Friday, without fail. The other kind, the science deep dives and the stories, show up whenever I have one worth telling, sometimes once or twice a week on top of the Friday show. My other show, the Safir Brothers Lawcast, is the one I do with my brother Gary.
Episodes
Episode 8 · Caselaw edition
The Shortcut Week: Florida Caselaw, Week of September 4, 2026
A driver refused a blood draw after a fatal crash and police took it anyway. The Fourth District affirmed suppression on the State’s own appeal and took back the sentence prosecutors had been using as a shortcut. Plus two Pinellas decisions, a Tampa theft that lost its felony, and a deep dive on the three ways the State takes blood.
Episode 7 · Caselaw edition
The Wrong Door Week: Florida Caselaw, Week of August 28, 2026
The same Sixth Amendment sentencing argument turned away at two different doors in two districts, a committed man who filed an appeal and a certiorari petition against one order, and three cert petitions with three different answers. Then a deep dive on the footnote where the State conceded its own prison releasee reoffender statute is unconstitutional.
Episode 6 · Caselaw edition
The Counting Week: Florida Caselaw, Week of August 21, 2026
Two counts of resisting out of one continuous act at a high school, a juvenile sentence review clock set ten years late and fixed because the prisoner did the math himself, and two men told where the courthouse door closes. Then a deep dive on how Florida counts crimes. All criminal this week.
Episode 5 · Science edition
Three Days in a Classroom (HGN Part 3 of 5)
The three day course that qualifies an officer on the eye test, from inside the room: the word the manuals never print, the exam that grades hands but never accuracy, the warnings that left the curriculum edition by edition, and a stopwatch study of 52 real arrest tapes where the average test ran 21 seconds against a 48 second floor.
Episode 4 · Caselaw edition
The Paperwork Week: Florida Caselaw, Week of August 14, 2026
A man convicted and sentenced twice with no valid charge ever filed, a revocation half built on hearsay, and two warrant cases from the same court, on the same day, landing on opposite ends of the same rule. The first caselaw edition: the week’s DCA decisions case by case, then a deep dive on the good faith exception. All criminal this week.
Episode 3 · Science edition
Eighty Eight Percent, or Thirty Seven (HGN Part 2 of 5)
The eye test's famous 88 percent accuracy figure is real, and the same page of the same study shows it flagging 37 percent of the sober drivers who took it. The long division nobody does out loud, the laboratory the test came from, and a validation study run with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office. My county.
Episode 2 · Science edition
The Eyes (HGN Part 1 of 5)
It's one in the morning, there's a pen a foot from your face, and no camera can see what the officer says your eyes did. Part one of five on horizontal gaze nystagmus: what the test actually measures, the sixteen second floor written into the officer's own manual, and the question to ask at your next suppression hearing.
Episode 1 · Origin story edition
The One Who Checks
A cop is on the witness stand and I am asking him to define a lazy eye. He cannot. The story of how I got there, by way of a war crimes tribunal at The Hague, a one way ticket to Colombia, and a year clerking in the Australian Outback, flying village to village in a bush plane with a judge.
Your host
Rory Safir
DUI, criminal defense, and personal injury attorney in St. Petersburg, Florida, and one of only six ACS-CHAL Forensic Lawyer-Scientists in the state. He started out as a public defender in Tampa and now takes the science-heavy cases apart the way the State’s own analysts do, from the breath machine to the blood draw. He is NHTSA-qualified to teach the same field sobriety battery the arresting officer was trained on, and serves on National College for DUI Defense task forces on alcohol and drug testing devices and on trial advocacy. He has written five books: four in plain English and free to the Floridians who need them, and The Florida DUI Trial Manual, the working reference he wrote for the criminal defense bar.
For Florida lawyers
The Florida DUI Trial Manual. The long version of what these shows do in twenty minutes. Breath, blood, and drugs, the roadside exercises from the instructor’s chair, the search and seizure fight, and the trial itself, with every case and study it works from indexed publicly.
Rory also takes DUI referrals and co-counsel arrangements from lawyers across Florida on science-heavy cases. Fees are divided as the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar require.
Subscribe
New episodes land on Fridays. Follow the show wherever you already listen, take the feed straight into whatever app you use, or get on the list and we will send a note when a new one drops.
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What the show is for
Florida appellate courts hand down decisions every week that change how a case actually gets litigated, and almost nobody has time to read all of them. The show exists so a working lawyer can stay current on the drive in.
It is built for criminal defense lawyers and for plaintiffs attorneys, and really for anybody whose job is representing an actual human being against an institution: the government, a big insurer, a hospital system, a company. Different courtrooms, same structural problem. One side has the machinery, and the other side has a person. If you are the one facing a case yourself, the plain English here is deliberate and you are welcome to listen in.
Nothing on this page or in any episode is legal advice, and listening to it does not make me your lawyer.
Looking for the other one? The Safir Brothers Lawcast is the show I do with my brother Gary, a Detroit personal injury lawyer, about trying cases and running a practice.
