How Many Attorneys Are Licensed in Florida?

Currently for the 2020-2021 time period there are 109, 830 ^[1] attorneys licensed to practice in the State of Florida. (The numbers are not complete for 2022) For 2016-2017 by comparison the number was 104, 676. This does not mean that all of the almost 110,000 attorneys presently live in Florida; it means that they area eligible to practice in Florida. The number of lawyer disbarments for 2020-2021 is 114. To compare with the 2016-2017 time frame there were 179 disbarments for that period.

The Florida Bar exam is given twice a year, once in February and once in July. The passage rates for various law school students varies from a usual percentage in the high 80’s for the top law school down to sometimes below 50% for the worst-performing law school examinees. Before being sworn in as an attorney the applicant must also submit to a thorough background check and pass a multi-state ethics examination. Florida does not give reciprocity to other states’ bar members; meaning a member of the New York bar for instance does not qualify to practice in Florida.

How Many Maritime Attorneys Are There in Florida?

First, let us answer the question of what is a maritime attorney. Maritime law involves a very specialized area of the law which often concerns not only the laws of the State of Florida, but also a long-standing history of federal judicial decisions—some going back to the beginning of the country, before Florida was a state. Maritime law also involves federal statutes being applied over and before the laws of Florida. Maritime law most prominently deals with boating accident cases, cruise ship injury cases, JetSki accidents, parasailing incidents, etc., when those incidents occur on what federal law calls “navigable waters”. Meaning, the overwhelming boating accidents, JeSki accidents, etc., will be governed by federal law and not Florida law. This is important because for instance most car accident attorneys are using Florida law, not federal law, in handling car accidents, falldowns, and dog bite cases.

maritime attorneys licensed in florida

If you begin with the number of all attorneys licensed to practice in Florida—almost 110,000—it is estimated that between 50-100 attorneys regularly practice in maritime law. There are three sources for this information.

Most Florida maritime attorneys are members of the Southeastern Admiralty Law Institute (known as “SEALI”). The directory in SEALI’s yearly membership directory regularly lists around 100 maritime attorneys for the State of Florida.
Every chance we get we ask fellow maritime attorneys throughout Florida how many maritime attorneys they see practicing in Florida on an everyday basis. The answer is almost uniformly “between 50 and 100”.
The third source is our actual interaction with maritime law firms throughout Florida—and there are very few—where we witness the number of maritime attorneys in Florida is indeed approximately 50-100.

Yes, there are Florida attorneys who get a boating case once every five years, but those are not the specialists who handle boating accident cases, cruise ship injury cases, JetSki collisions, Parasailing accidents, etc., every day of the week.

We have been that Florida maritime injury law firm for 25 years. Our attorneys handle boating accident cases, cruise ship injury claims, and JetSki crashes every single day.

You can have confidence that our attorneys specialize in these cases. It is not a side gig. This is what we do. Every day.

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