Orr is admitted to practice in the state of Florida and is a member of The Florida Bar. He is also admitted to practice before the United States District Court for the Middle and Northern Districts of Florida, and the Federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Lucky, humbled and blessed all come to mind,” said Orr, when asked how it felt to be elected. “Of course, prepared, ready and anxious are also apropos.”

Orr has been a member of the Young Lawyers Division Board of Governors for the past seven years, and has held nearly every chair position on the board and chaired nearly every committee. Orr’s interest in leadership positions began as an undergraduate through student government and continued into his law school career at Coastal where he participated in moot court and served as president of the SBA for two years.

“I think one of the great things Coastal did was provide a platform to engage in leadership roles,” said Orr. “The administration, that being Dean Goplerud and his predecessors, gave me those opportunities that more or less jump-started my experience to the higher level of leadership. There are so many professors who helped me along the way outside of the classroom. Gerry Moran was and still is an unbelievable mentor, and Sander Moody has been a great help to me even long after I’ve left law school. Coastal Law also gave me the opportunity as an alumnus to serve as president of the Alumni Association. It’s all about having that platform – that ability to help people and serve.”

During his time in this position, Orr will coordinate his efforts with Greg Coleman, who will be serving as president of The Florida Bar in 2014. Orr is looking forward to discussions at Long Range Planning meetings over the next year between select members of the Young Lawyers Division Board of Governors, which will determine his pursuits during his presidency.

Orr will be sworn in as president-elect by Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Ricky Polston at The Bar’s General Assembly meeting June 28 in Boca Raton.

“It all comes back to service – I really love to serve and help people.”

In the Northeast Florida community, Orr aids various organizations through board service and volunteer work. He was president of the Family Nurturing Center of Florida and serves the Special Olympics of Florida through miscellaneous roles in fundraising, management and volunteerism.

Elizabeth Shaw, class of 1999

Elizabeth Shaw can discuss pulmonary rehabilitation with as much fluency as she addresses health law and its current trends. A former coronary care nurse, this charter graduate of Florida Coastal School of Law has successfully blended a career in health care with a passion for health law.

Specifically, Shaw represents physicians and health care providers, home health agencies, health care clinics, diagnostic imaging centers, pharmacies and clinical labs and handles corporate work in transaction and regulatory health law. She also assists clients in analyzing and structuring complex health care transactions to comply with applicable laws, including, but not limited to, Stark, Anti-Kickback, Fee-Splitting and Patient Self-Referral laws. Key transactions include the combination, sale and acquisition of physician practices; formation of physician networks; preparation of employment agreements and responses to Medicare and Medicaid audits. Shaw also is a frequent lecturer and author on various health care topics and is a member of the Health Law Section of The Florida Bar, the Health Law Section of the Jacksonville Bar Association and the American Health Lawyers Association.

“As I was preparing for law school, I really wanted to build on my experience,” said Shaw, a former St. Vincent’s nurse and Coastal Law’s first board-certified health law attorney with the local firm Reznicsek, Fraser, White & Shaffer, P.A.

Shaw is not alone in her career strategy. A growing number of professionals from fields outside of law have been pursuing a second career in the legal field. Last fall 45 percent of Coastal Law’s incoming class was age 25 years or older. The percentage of students who came to law school aged 30 or older was 11 percent.

Current Florida Coastal School of Law student Bobby Ingram, for example, has enjoyed a long, profitable career in performance music through his band Molly Hatchet. But an interest in the details of contract law drew him to the field, and he is now pursuing a degree (see story on page 11).

Whether it’s the music business or health care, knowing an industry inside and out can help second-career attorneys stand apart in their practice. Speaking their clients’ language is another perk. For Shaw, her health care experience has made it easier to communicate.

“I think clients are very comfortable with me, especially when dealing with reimbursement issues, informed consent, and discharging a patient from practice — any of those things that tend to happen at a doctor’s office or at the hospital,” said Shaw. “They can use medical terminology and don’t have to explain it to me — it gives them a good comfort level.”

After graduation, Shaw worked briefly for a local practice before employing her new skills at Memorial Hospital where she was hired as director of risk management. In that role, she provided legal opinions to the hospital and medical staff and represented the hospital at depositions, mediations and trials, among other responsibilities. Later, Shaw moved into private practice health law. Since 2006 she has been at Reznicsek, Fraser, White & Shaffer.

But career success and satisfaction aside, Shaw admits this isn’t the easiest of times to be practicing health law. Representing physicians has become increasingly difficult because of the consolidation of health care providers.

“There is an increase in hospitals purchasing physician practices and employing the physicians,” she said. “With the Affordable Care Act, they’re really pushing for these integrated delivery systems where the hope is to decrease cost and increase quality of care. So you see more and more physicians who are selling their practices.”

Regardless, there are still plenty of areas for Shaw to apply her experience and health law expertise. She represents individual providers before various boards and helps physicians who are forming multispecialty groups to maintain control of their practice.

“When you’re presented with a set of new challenges,” she said. “You just expand your scope.”

One needs to look no further than the Palestinian Territories to see how a governing body and its people deal on a day-to-day basis with a mixture of international and local laws. Throughout its history, Palestine has been subject to many different legal systems because of the many different ruling authorities. Ottoman, British, Jordanian and Egyptian laws, Israeli military orders, and “Urf” (local customs and practices) still influence and affect the current legal system and structure. One commentator opined that: “The Palestinian legal system can be compared to a tossed salad, with layers of different laws and systems all mixed up into a
confused mess…”

Practicing in the middle of all this is Kosty M. Ziadeh, of the Ziadeh Law Office in Ramallah, West Bank. Known as “Gus” to friends and faculty, Ziadeh was a member of the charter and first graduating class of Florida Coastal School of Law in 1999.

“Attending Florida Coastal School of Law was one of the best decisions that I ever made,” said Ziadeh. “The school started with a unique vision of responsibility to the legal profession and its students. Back then I had no doubt the school would become something special among law schools nationwide and internationally.”

After about 10 years in Northeast Florida, where he received his high school, undergraduate and law school degrees, Ziadeh returned to Ramallah to join his father’s law office. A younger brother was subsequently added, and today the three partners are the legal advisors to a wide range of companies, banks, hospitals, nongovernmental organizations and municipalities. The firm covers all areas of the Palestinian Civil Law, handling issues in corporate, contract, property, financial, tax and customs laws, in addition to agency, distribution, patent, labor and insurance law.

“Much like Coastal Law’s philosophy, at our law office we strongly believe in alternative dispute resolution methods, mainly arbitration due to its regulated, efficient and more expedient path under Palestinian statute,” said Ziadeh. “When going to court we only accept high profile and sensitive cases with difficult legal issues, mainly at the last two stages in the litigation process, meaning only in front of the highest court in the Palestinian Territories.”

In Ziadeh’s view, how is the “salad” of laws and systems being addressed?

“As we know, in January of 1996 the Palestinian people took their first step toward democracy by participating in free elections, which led to the issuance of the Palestinian Basic Law and its amendments later on, and many other laws and statutes organizing the various aspects of Palestinian life,” he said. “The Basic Law tries to break away with past systems by providing for a bill of rights that is subject to judicial review by a Constitutional Court. Thus, a central function of the judicial branch is to ensure the separation of powers within the Palestinian society. Judicial review is the most effective weapon in the hands of the judiciary to protect the rights of the minority from assault by governmental officials. It is contributing significantly to the development of these laws and their application to the changing conditions within the Palestinian society, and to the elimination of the mixing up or confusion of these laws.”

According to Ziadeh, despite the number or origin of the various laws in the “salad,” the good news is that the executive branch is committed to the principle of separation of powers and to the reform process.

“Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is very serious about reform and is doing his best to build a new modern Palestinian state, a state of people and institutions, where the rule of law is the prominent theme,” said Ziadeh. “This will strengthen the Palestinian economy and will make it rise and grow on solid ground by attracting international investors and have it stop relying on foreign financial aid. This will be a step toward an independent Palestinian state among the 193 independent countries at the United Nations.”

Against this larger backdrop, technology is now also playing a role. The Palestinian Legal and Judicial System, “Al-Muqtafi,” is the first legal databank in Palestine, similar to Westlaw or LexisNexis. Over the last decade, legal researchers and IT programmers at the Institute of Law at Birzeit University (located on the outskirts of the West Bank town of Birzeit) have designed and developed the databank. To date, the system includes more than 50,000 pages of legislation over a period of 150 years of Palestinian history. It also includes full texts of 1,200 regulations published in the Palestinian Official Gazette and all Palestinian high court judgments since 1994.

“‘Al-Muqtafi’ is greatly valued by me and my colleagues in the legal profession. It enables us to search the ‘salad’ in a more professional and efficient way to find the latest precedents,” said Ziadeh. “In addition, the Palestinian Bar Association and the Judicial High Council (composed of the highest-ranking judges from certain Palestinian courts) have developed and implemented an online service for the attorneys in Palestine to obtain the minutes of their current trial proceedings.”

Yet, despite all the outside legal influences Palestine has dealt with in its history, more continue to come its way. The European Union, as well as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have been sponsoring and funding many “Rule of Law” initiatives in Palestine. Ziadeh said the Palestinian people and government are nothing short of grateful for the support.

“These foreign initiatives offer the Palestinian people the democratic experiences of these generous and leading countries, experiences that are deeply rooted in their traditions, customs and cultures,” he said.

But despite those highs, Reel has seen his share of lows in the business of sports, and his perspective is global.

Jeff Reel with sons, Davis and Hayden

“There was definitely a down period when the economy was down,” said Reel, a class of 2000 alumnus and a Coastal Law adjunct professor. “Major companies weren’t doing sports sponsorships anymore. In fact, a lot of them were pulling back from that.”

However, if sports marketing provides any glimmer of consumer confidence, Reel said business is picking up.

In February, Reel and the ATP orchestrated a major sponsorship deal with Corona in Mexico City and, most recently, negotiated a plum sponsorship relationship with FedEx to bring them on as an ATP sponsor.

“This year has been one of the best, if not the best year Iíve seen,” he said. “These are the kinds of things that, as a lawyer in my position, you like working on: getting to work with international companies you want to have your brand associated with. It certainly helps to raise our profile in the sports world — and it’s a lot more fun doing that than working on litigation.”

The growing international flavor of sports flaw is also a trend Joshua Kane is seeing in his line of work. Kane, associate counsel at the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) in Daytona Beach and a 2007 graduate, said LPGA is getting into many more markets for sports sponsorships than it has in the past.

“If you look at the LPGA, we’ve exploited opportunities all over the world,” said Kane. “Emerging markets like China, Japan and South Korea offer great business opportunities and an untapped consumer marketplace.”

His expertise has been a boon in emerging markets.

“The business and legal issues are complex, including negotiation of governing law and dispute resolution mechanisms,” Kane said.

Kane also cited the use of new platforms as another emerging trend. Technology has provided many creative and previously untapped outlets for reaching fans. So keeping up with technology, industry standards and communication laws related to marketing and the promotion of sports and athletes has added another layer of growth to the business.

Florida Coastal School of Law helped both Kane and Reel gain a practical perspective of the industry ó a quality both attorneys make a point to share with up-and-coming attorneys, interns and students.

“Before I entered the LPGA as an intern, I was familiar with both legal and business sports issues,” said Kane of his Florida Coastal education. “You receive an insiderís perspective in the school’s sports law program, and I also see it in my interns from the school.”

The school gave Kane an opportunity to pursue two passions ó sports and law. He said he worked as closely as he could with Professor Rick Karcher to find and seize new opportunities to expand his experience. The first summer of his law school career, Kane worked for a corporate legal department and the next summer worked for MPS Group in Jacksonville. Later came Kane’s first big break to intern at LPGA.

“During my LPGA internship, I worked as many hours as I could and tried to involve myself in as many business meetings as I could,” Kane said. “Just before graduation, I received a job offer — a product of hard work, good timing and luck.”

Four years later, Kane continues to pay it forward, routinely recruiting interns from Florida Coastal at LPGA.

Joshua Kane

“Coastal’s interns are more familiar and better prepared to discuss and research sports legal and business issues,” he said. “The school focuses on practical skill-building, and that makes a difference in the workplace.”

As a student, Reel said he was impressed with the professors and training he received at Florida Coastal. Now an adjunct professor, Reel works to help his students focus on practical training. His mid-term and final exams test knowledge of black letter law, but also students’ abilities to draft contracts or interpret memos from business clients.

“I’ve had a lot of students say that was great to do because itís not something other classes always allow for,” Reel said. “I set it up so that my classes are designed for practical experience.”

In the working world, however, Reel is still ecstatic to be working in the field of sports law — and even more delighted to be living in Northeast Florida. Reel, an avid sports fan from the Chicago area, said it did not take long to say yes to the job offer that set his career in motion at ATP Tour and Florida Coastal School of Law.

“It’s a fun area to work, and fun to see our work out there on ESPN and in the news,” Reel said. “There are a lot of really good people in the business, too, which makes it easy to get up in the morning and get to work.”