He Argued Cases Before Judges. Then He Became One.

Yale Undergraduate Law Journal: Hello everyone and welcome to Amicus, a podcast by the Yale Undergraduate Law Journal. My name is Sophie Sarazin, and today I am joined here by the former Chief Judge of the First Tudor Circuit in Florida, Mr. John Miller. John has served as the judge since 2010, specializing in family law, and now presides over criminal trials. Before becoming a judge, he worked in-house at a firm, and today we're just really interested in learning about your experience with working in government. And the pathway that you took there. could you start by just telling us a little bit about your background, your education, and your work experience? I graduated from college from Florida State University in nineteen eighty-three with a degree in accounting. I attended law school at the University of Florida and graduated in nineteen eighty-six with a law degree. My intention when I went to law school was to become a tax attorney because of my accounting background. While in law school, I joined the mock trial competition team at the University of Florida and had the privilege of competing in a tournament representing the University of Florida. It's the mock trial team. I fell in love with trial practice while I was a member of the mock trial team. I decided not to go the extra year of law school to get the LLM degree in taxation because I wanted to be a litigator and not spend my time in an office looking at a tax book. So I j graduated from law school and then joined a law firm. I was in private practice for 20 years. At that during that time, I was in court every day. civil, criminal, domestic. You mentioned I specialized in family law. I did some family law as a lawyer, but I also tried numerous other cases, both civil and criminal. I tried probably 40 criminal cases, including three murder cases and one death penalty case to a jury. I tried numerous civil cases, including a medical malpractice case. in which we received a multimillion dollar jury verdict as a plaintiff. So by the time I took the bench I had a a very diverse background in civil and criminal law and family law as well. From what I'm hearing, it sounds like you went to work straight after law school and you went to law school straight after college. What was that like? And would you have changed anything about that? Are you happy that you started working straight out of law school? If I could go back, I would not change a thing. It was very hard. I literally started law school two weeks after I graduated from college. University of Florida had a spring class, still does. Florida and Stetson both do. I was in accounting, which was actually a five-year program. I did it in four and a half because I went a couple of summers. So I graduated in December of 83 and literally started law school two weeks later. It was very overwhelming. The smart thing to do would have probably been to take a break, but looking back, I would not change it. I would go straight through. Not only did I go straight through. From college to law school, if you go in the spring class, that you have to go to summer school that first year. That's the requirement. My second year of law school, I interned actually at this very courthouse, Scambia County Courthouse for one of the judges. I did that the second summer. The third summer, I interned at the public defender's office in Gainesville. And then I graduated right after that. So I did not have a break at all from the time I finished started college in the fall of seventy-nine until the time I graduated law school in December of eighty-six. Wow, that's that's really interesting. It's it's quite awesome to seeing how you went straight from school to work and it definitely seems like it worked out incredibly well for you and that you had an incredibly successful career. And obviously now that you're a judge, I'm just curious, what does your day-to-day look like? I know you're no longer chief judge, but you're obviously still on the bench. So what are your duties like today and what were they like when you were chief judge? Chief judge was totally different. Now, when I was chief judge, I always carried a full caseload. As chief judge, I would carry I said in family law during the six years I was chief judge, and the reason for that is to keep the schedule flexible. Cause chief the position of chief judge requires a lot of traveling. You know, you have to travel to Tallahassee, meet with the legislative branch, the Florida Supreme Court, the other chief judges from around the state. We would have meetings. which is the organization that runs the trial courts in Florida. We would have meetings there. I would constantly have meetings. Our circuit consists of four counties. I would constantly meet with the other judges in the four counties. I would do that and maintain a full time caseload. But in family law you can keep your case, your hearing time flexible. You know, you can move it around. Now that I'm no longer chief judge, I've I just focused solely on running my two criminal divisions. I'm in jury trials this week. I don't have a trial today. I have one in the morning. I had jury selection yesterday. I have docket days, which is a housekeeping administrative day to figure out what we're doing with the 300 cases we have per docket cycle per division. We have motion days where we hear criminal motions. Motions to suppress, bond motions, motions to dismiss, things of that nature, motions and liminy. I have violation of probation hearings for people that violate their probation. I have sentencing hearings after someone is found guilty by a jury or if they enter a plea without a plea agreement. So I have two divisions and I'm constantly in and out of court in both divisions. That's really awesome. And I know that you also talked about your extensive legal experience before you even took it to the bench. So what are some of the differences you've noticed from working in-house at a firm or interning at the public defender versus now at your government job as a judge? Private practice is different. It's something I would not have traded for anything. I really enjoyed being a lawyer. I always wanted to be a trial lawyer from the time I was in middle school. And I got to live a dream, and not many people can say that. I've loved trying cases. Well you find out though when you're in private practice, or even if you have a government job, a state attorney or public defender, you find out that trying cases is only a small part of practicing law, especially if you're in private practice. You have the business side of private practice, which occupies at least 25% of your time. You have to manage your practice, you have to manage your income. to manage your expenses. You have to work within your law firm and deal with your law partners and deal with staff and whatnot. The administrative I call it the business side. The administrative and business side of private practice is very time consuming. I would say about five to ten percent of your time in private practice actually involves trying cases. E the big cases, the medical malpractice cases, the personal injury cases, the great majority of those do not go to trial. The great majority of those settle. You do spend some time in depositions and mediations, but very little court time. Criminal cases as well, most cases do not go to trial, they settle. And so I enjoyed private practice. I wouldn't trade the memories for anything. Representing people, helping people with their causes and their problems is very rewarding. Very rewarding. And some of the best memories I have from practicing law and trying cases, I did not make a lot of money in those cases. there were some cases that I found very rewarding. that I represented people for free or that paid very little money. Now you have to limit that. You can't do it all the time. But i I found it to be very rewarding. Being a judge is very rewarding in of itself. It's a different type of reward. It's a different type of satisfaction. I will say that it's a lot more stable than private practice, and I don't mean that economically. it is true that my best years. praxing law, I made more money than I do as a judge, but when I say more stable, I'm really not talking about economics. I'm talking about just your lifestyle. You're on an even kill. You have a government job. You don't have to worry about whether the your legal assistant is getting along with a receptionist or you're getting along with your law partners. You don't have to worry about scheduling with judges. You don't have to worry about, you know, income overhead. registering with Florida bar, things of that nature that you deal with in private practice. We have a tremendous support team, court administration staff. As a judge, whenever you need help, help is going to be available. Our circuit has 36 judges. And when I was chief judge, I used to meet with all the incoming judges and spend a couple of hours with them. And one thing I always told them, This is so different than any law firm or any state attorney's office or public defender's office or other government job. Every circuit has judges who have dealt with every issue you're going to deal with. If you have a question, all you need to do is ask. One of the other judges has dealt with that same issue a thousand times before. Whenever you need support staff, go to your court administrator. Whenever you need supplies, they will get you your supplies. Technology, we have an IT staff that I think is one of the best in the country. So as a judge, you show up to work, you do your docket. Now, being a judge is very demanding. I'm I'm not trying to sugarcoat that. It's a great responsibility that I take very seriously. It requires maximum effort, which I give. It is not a nine to five job by any means. It especially wasn't when I was chief judge. It seems like I was here every day or by the phone at all times. But even as a trial judge, I mean, the many years I've been a trial judge without being chief judge, if I need to get an order out, I need to make a ruling, I come in here on the weekends or I stay late or I get up early and do whatever I think it needs to be done for me to do the job efficiently and get my work done. But even with even with that. With a responsibility. I find being a judge is you're much more on an even kill and a stable pace than you are as a as an attorney. Yeah, it sounds like the workload is a lot more consistent and you kind of know what you're expected to do each week rather than when working in private practice, where you could be working from, you know, morning to the next day or other days, have it just be a little bit slower and definitely more based on the economy. Yeah, and I was very fortunate in private practice. I belonged to a smaller firm that had been established for a long, long time. I never ran out of work. And in from that perspective, I was very fortunate because that's not true with a lot of lawyers. What a lot of people don't understand about private practice. Is and I I've been in this business now for 40 years, and my wife is still an attorney in a law firm with a very, very busy practice. Private practice has its ebbs and flows. Some of it is dependent on the economy. When the economy is good, private practice is good. I remember right about the time I became a judge, we had a recession. And actually, I was a magistrate for three years before I was appointed to the bench. And it was about the time I became a magistrate. And I remember thinking, I am so fortunate that I now have a government job because private practice is really struggling. Criminal, family law, those types of things are dependent on people having money. That is dependent on the economy. When the economy's bad. People don't have money. And they don't have money for family law attorneys and criminal defense attorneys and other things. Now, you know, we always had personal injury that never goes away. and so private practice has its ebbs and flows, its ups and downs. And so as a judge, you never run out of work. As I said, you know, you get a salary, it is what it is, you get paid by the state. The other aspect of being a judge, and I didn't become a judge for this reason. I mean, I didn't become a judge because of economics, because I was really blessed and fortunate with my private practice. But once I became a judge, it dawned on me and I realized not only do you get a good salary, you're furnished health insurance at a very low cost, you're part of a pension system with the state. That is very good for judges. And those are things that people don't think about when they enter private practice. I I see a lot of lawyers who were working in private practice into their seventies now. I've seen lawyers trying cases in their late seventies before juries. I'm not saying they should or should not do that. If they choose to work and they want to continue to work, that's obviously their right and their privilege. But I do wonder how much of that has to do with economics and if they would still be doing that if they were a member of the judiciary and and were in the pension system and had health insurance and the other benefits. Yeah, that's really interesting to think about. You know, when I interned at the state attorney, I definitely saw a lot of lawyers that were at least seventy, maybe even up into their eighties. And it was surprising that they could even stand up and participate in a trial. But yeah, government pension is definitely something that I think future attorneys should consider when deciding their legal career, as well as having health insurance and job security. And in this economy, I think it's a definitely important factor to consider. So I know over the summer there was a very popularized and televised trial with Lindsay Clancy versus the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And obviously, you know, being open to the public, there was vast public opinion and thoughts on how. government ought to run and how lawyers ought to practice cases. What do you think is something that's largely misrepresented or if anything, just misunderstood about government legal jobs or even just the court system in general? Could you be more specific? I guess what kind of public misunderstandings do you think that there are about working a legal job or what the experience of working in government actually is like? It depends on the legal job. Like For your reference, maybe as a judge. Most of them I think I've covered. There there's so many issues that come up when you're a judge from day to day. I honestly didn't follow the Clancy case. I mean, I'm like everyone else. I'd watch the highlight on TV for a few minutes, but you you never really know what goes on in a trial unless you watch the entire trial, unless you hear all the evidence, unless you you hear the arguments from the lawyers and you hear the law. It's hard to take a bit here and a piece there. Inform it's hard for me to take a bit here and a piece there about a trial. Inform an opinion. I remember there were I we're going back now to the 90s. It seems like there were a lot of high-profile controversial trials in the 90s. Let's see, we got the Menendez Brothers trial, the OJ Simpson trial, the Bettery Broderick trial, the WMP trial. Smith trial, you know, the Kennedy nephew who was accused of sexual battery in Palm Beach. The Rodney King trial, the police, police brutality trial. And there were a lot of verdicts that were very controversial and a lot of verdicts that received criticism in the media. And I've been a judge and has presided over trials where people would say the verdicts were shocking or surprising or whatever. obviously as a judge, I can't really comment publicly on any other any other case, even if it's outside my jurisdiction. But let me just say this. You can't criticize a jury unless you hear all the evidence that was presented in the trial and hear the exact same evidence that the jury heard. I'm not criticizing or fault in the media, but you cannot rely on the media's interpretation or coverage of a trial always. It may be a snapshot, it may be a highlight. But it's not everything and you can't judge or form an opinion until you hear everything. And so some of the verdicts were put that people criticized in the nineties. I too criticized some of them, but when I went back and read extensively about the trials and what was presented and the way it was presented, I have to say that even though I disagreed with some of the verdicts, they did not surprise me. Absolutely. One thing I'm really curious about, because I know I've seen this in the courtroom and I'm sure that you have, obviously technology has evolved a lot in the past couple of years, specifically with artificial intelligence. I know that there's even been pro salitigants that use artificial intelligence to serve as their attorney. So what are some of the challenges or just some of the things that you've noticed with how times are with life fully embedded with artificial intelligence? And what are some challenges that you foresee happening as technology continues to evolve? That's a very good question. Let me break it down into two parts. First of all, AI, so far, I have not seen a big change in criminal court. Criminal court, the defendant is always going to have a lawyer with rare s exceptions. There are exceptions to that, but they're very rare. So most of the time, you're going to have an attorney in criminal court who's a licensed member of the bar, who has an ethical responsibility to file pleadings in good faith and to file pleadings that are competent and to have a good work product. So I AI hasn't really changed that. Where I do hear complaints from other judges is in the family law arena and sometimes in the civil arena, where people are pro se and cannot afford lawyers, and they're seeking help, and rightfully so. I'm not criticizing anybody that uses AI because let's face it, not everyone can afford a lawyer. And The complaint I hear from judges is when litigants use AI, they throw it's like throwing the kitchen sink at it. They file all kind of superfluous, unnecessary, redundant pleadings. And it's challenging for judges to sort through that is the complaint that I hear from other judges. All right. The first part of your question about modern technology. Since I started doing this 40 years ago, it is a night and day difference in how a lawyer tries a case now. I've tried a lot of cases to juries and judges, a lot of bench trials, where all I had was my legal pad, my client. I might have an easel or a poster board to put up in front of the jury for closing argument. Most of the time I didn't even do that. I might have depositioned transcripts that I use to impeach witnesses. We did jury instructions from a book and then they were printed by the judge and read. Juries now require technology. They require video presentations. They require audiovisual aids. If you have exhibits, whether you're on the state side or the defense side in a criminal case, you need to be able to display them on one of our video screens. We have state-of-the-art technology video screens that the court can control that displays the exhibits to the jury, to the audience, to the court, to the witnesses. For example, if there's fingerprint analysis or DNA analysis, you have the written reports and then you usually have a video presentation. That's displayed in the courtroom. Law enforcement now all wear body cams. Trying a criminal case can be so much easier if you're on the prosecution side. Rather than have to describe how the defendant led you in that high speed chase and what he did and how dangerous it was, you just play the video. If it's a drug case, possession of a controlled substance, rather than the officer just describing, hey, I pulled this out of his pocket or whatever, you have a video of it. You take it out of his jacket pocket or whatever. Juries require that. The downside of it is sometimes juries require too much. Jurors watch too much CSI. And I'm not knocking that. I love CSI shows. I love crime shows. My wife gets on me about it. She says, You s you deal with this every day. Why do you? I just love it. I enjoy the science of it. I enjoy the mystery of it. I enjoy watching how crimes are solved. And I How people are exonerated who are innocent. It's the same science and technology that exonerates innocent people that convicts guilty people. So it's not one-sided. But jurors watch these crime shows. They think every case that comes into a courtroom should involve CSI. They think you should have some crackpot DNA expert or fingerprint expert or body fluid expert. Or voice analysis or something in every single case, and not every single case has CSI. It doesn't require it. And sometimes the state has a hard time explaining to the jury this is all we have because this is all it is. We didn't bring in CSI for this possession of cocaine case. The other downside is our technology has become so advanced that in most states the Crime lab resources are strained. There are so many cases and so many items of ev evidence that have to be tested. The laboratories are backed up and they have to make priorities. Are you going to process this case where someone's trafficking infentanyl? Or are you going to process the sexual battery case? Are you going to process this homicide case? Or are you going to spend your resources processing this grand theft or burglary case? Or possession of marijuana case? And the government has to make. Difficult choices as to how they're going to prioritize their resources. And in the cases where they don't use the crime labs, then they have to explain to the jury why they haven't used the crime lab. So it cuts both ways, but overall, I think the advances in technology overall are beneficial to the civil and criminal justice systems. Interesting. Do you think any government jobs are at risk of being lost by technology? Like, do you think that at a certain point some parts of technology are going to automate some of the legal jobs that we have? Or do you think that they'll stay relatively constant? That is a good question. It's very difficult to answer. I think there are certain areas of law where AI and modern technology are going to decrease the demand for lawyers. Family law. We've tried to create a system in Florida, and I worked hard on this when I was chief judge. I'm not saying I created it, but I'm saying I spent a lot of time looking at it and trying to study it. Where we make legal forms accessible to the public in family law type cases. The Supreme Court had actually been doing that for years. And they kept getting better and better about it. And all those forms are on the Supreme Court website. I think more and more people are going to rely on that rather than hire divorce lawyers. Now, not every case can be settled. In some cases, you're always going to run issue into issues that require lawyers. Probate is another example. Rather than hire probate lawyers, I think people are going to start use using more artificial technology, artificial intelligence, and other technology to Do probate proceedings themselves rather than hire lawyers. Guardianship proceedings, same way. Small claims cases down in county court. When I was chief judge, I initiated an online mediation. I don't do small claims in circuit court, but we had our county judges start to utilize online mediation to settle civil cases before they came to court. When they involve small dollar amounts. You're going to see that expand more and more, I think. So eventually I do think it will have an effect on the demand for lawyers. Really interesting. what about Zoom testimony? I know that's already been used for certain unavailable witnesses or witnesses in different states or continents, but do you think it's going to become a standardized thing? I do. Let's go back to 2019 when I became chief judge. I would attend an annual court technology seminars called eCords. I remember the first one I attended at the beginning of this three-day seminar. Someone held up their cell phone and said, This is your courthouse of the future. We all laughed. Said, no way. Fast forward about nine months from that, and we had the COVID pandemic. When I was at the technology seminar, there were three members of my IT staff who were there with me. They started telling me about this concept called Zoom. And I said, Well, this is interesting. You know, well, I don't know that you're gonna just replace court proceedings with Zoom, but it could certainly be a tool for certain types of proceedings and for certain witnesses from out of state or out of town. The pandemic struck. We couldn't hold live court proceedings for one year. It was longer than that in certain areas of Florida. We had these bi-weekly chief judge meetings over Zoom with the Chief Justice, and we would constantly come up with a plan and improvise it. Long story short, the dockets were backed up. My IT had said we just learned about this at the technology seminar. I've known the contact for Zoom. Let's order Zoom. In the first judicial circuit, we were one of the first circuits in Florida to use Zoom during the pandemic. The Florida Supreme Court, the Chief Justice Kennedy, did a fantastic job of getting the court to establish emergency rules and protocols for use of Zoom during legal proceedings in lieu of live proceedings. And so Well, I was chief judge for a whole year, year and a half. I basically ran my family law docket by Zoom. And I would give people a choice. I would say, look, you can either wait a year and a half and get a hearing, or we can have one in two months by Zoom. The lawyers started using Zoom. The lawyers started loving Zoom. They didn't have to leave their offices. the Zoom technology got better and better. The video quality was better. The audio quality was better. me being competent, that increased as well, and how I could let witnesses in and out of the proceeding and exclude witnesses when I needed to, and that sort of thing. So we got to using Zoom for a long time, and a lot of judges, including myself, did not want to stop using it, even when the pandemic, you know, went away. Now we still couldn't do criminal jury trials with Zoom unless both sides consented. We never really tried that here in the first circuit. so at one of our la when Zoom COVID was winding down, one of our last chief judges' meeting, I suggested to the Chief Justice at the time, we've learned a lot about how we can do things more efficiently and better through the use of technology. Why don't you consider making some of these Zoom rules permanent and putting them in the rules of judicial administration? The Supreme Court did that. We didn't go back to we can totally use Zoom wherever we want, but now there are rules. If both sides consent to Zoom, we can use it. If one side wants to be live, I can give them a live hearing. That's in family law. Obviously now I'm in criminal, but we still use Zoom in criminal. If there's a witness that needs to appear from out of town, we have rules for that. We have rules where we can use Zoom for pretrial conferences that are non-evidentiary hearings. We have rules. criminal civil family that concern expert witnesses and what to do if one side objects to Zoom testimony and the other doesn't. So I won't get into all the nuts and butts of the bolts of the rules, but the the COVID crisis educated us, made us better, made us more efficient. Zoom is now part. Virtual hearings are now part of the court system and they are here to stay. And I think it's for the better of the system. Thank you. Well, we're nearing the end of our time. And so I was just wondering, is there anything else? I know that you've covered a lot, but anything else that someone interested in going into government law should know? Or do you think that you've kind of touched all bases? It's different for each person. I have found it to be very rewarding for me. There are advantages and disadvantages of it. And I would encourage everyone to explore their options and consider all options. Thank you so much. And just to close, I know that you said you wouldn't have changed anything about your education experience. You know, that is going straight to work right after law school and straight to law school right after college. But is there anything that you would change about your career as a whole? And if so, what? Honestly, no. I have I don't mean that to sound arrogant or like I've had a perfect career, or I don't mean to come across as if there haven't been struggles, but my career has involved a lot of hard work through a lot of years. It's been very rewarding, both in private practice and in government work. I have been very fortunate to have been able to live a dream. And from that perspective, I would not change anything. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time, Judge Miller. It was a pleasure to get to hear a little bit more about your career, about your legal experience, about your lived experience. And thank you so much for joining us today on Amicus