History of Southern Legal Counsel
Southern Legal Counsel, Inc. (SLC) was founded in 1977 as an outgrowth of work being conducted at the University of Florida College of Law. At that time, Jon L. Mills was Director of the newly formed Center for Governmental Responsibility (CGR). Mills was heading the law school’s Executive Impoundment Project, which was working with the Congress in investigating then President Nixon’s impoundment of congressional appropriations and programs. Mills advertised for third year law clerks. Albert J. Hadeed applied although he was a second year law student. Exercising the powers of persuasion that have become his hallmark, Hadeed wrote a memo with his application about how the third year requirement was an inappropriate irrebuttable presumption of the ability to do the work. Mills hired him. Hadeed worked on CGR’s contract with the Irvin Committee to research executive impoundment as a research associate and subsequently while still in law school as CGR’s staff director.
CGR performed public interest research that occasionally made its way into politically controversial cases. For example, CGR worked on litigation with Public Citizen, which had been founded by Ralph Nader in 1971. In 1972, Public Citizen under the leadership of Ralph Nader and Alan Morrison, formed its litigation group, the prototype of public interest law firms in the country. Some were becoming concerned that the College of Law was developing a litigation profile. With the support of the late Joseph R. ”Dick” Julin, then Dean of the law school, Mills formed SLC with Hadeed who become SLC’s first Executive Director, leaving his position with Mahoney, Hadlow, Chambers & Adams, one of Jacksonville’s premier law firms.
SLC was incorporated in February 1977, but funds were not raised until the summer with a seed grant from the Josephine McIntosh Foundation. The Foundation also had provided the seed grant for the Impoundment Project and for the Center for Governmental Responsibility.
SLC was created to fulfill a special role. While some unrepresented interests have access to legal aid or to free or pro bono private lawyers for selected cases, many do not. SLC has focused on groups and interests demonstrating the greatest need for civil legal assistance. This need has typically arisen as a result of both insufficient private Bar interest combined with inadequate alternative legal services. SLC’s cases must meet IRS standards on public interest litigation.
In the early years, SLC litigated on many fronts, including environmental work, which ultimately spun off to form 1000 Friends of Florida. SLC was the first general counsel of 1000 Friends, as well as providing its first physical location. Also, in the early years, Jon Rossman was the Director of the Governor’s Commission On Advocacy For Persons With Disabilities, which receives federal funds to protect and advocate for people with disabilities. (It is now called the Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities.) For many years, SLC received a grant to litigate on behalf of this organization’s constituency.
SLC's mission has led it to litigate in federal and state courts and before administrative agencies across a range of substantive legal areas that seek systemic reform. Issue areas have included securing and enforcing the rights of persons with disabilities, obtaining a free appropriate public education for special needs students, forcing improvements in the juvenile justice system, enhancing the accountability of The Florida Bar and governmental agencies, ensuring the appropriate use of comprehensive planning statutes, and defending the environment. SLC's work has been more than litigative. It has included drafting model regulations for state agency adoption, testifying at legislative hearings, furnishing technical assistance to attorneys and others, preparing training manuals and conducting seminars for lay and professional groups, as well as educating the general public through speaking engagements and publications.
In the early 1990's, the Advocacy Center changed leadership, and about the same time, the Florida Bar Foundation’s (FBF) monies increased due to mandatory pro bono. SLC decreased its work with the Advocacy Center and received additional grant money from the FBF. In 1996, when Congress passed the restrictions on Legal Services Corporation (LSC) programs, FBF developed the Companion System and funded the kind of work that the LSC programs could no longer pursue: specifically, class actions and raising claims for attorneys’ fees. At that point, SLC became part of the “companion delivery system.” In 1999, SLC began receiving FBF funding for the Special Education Advocacy Project.
Our current work includes litigation on behalf of institutionalized persons, students, special needs children, individuals with disabilities seeking community services, public housing tenants, and other civil rights litigants.
The first SLC Board was Julin, Mills, Chesterfield Smith, Sr., Michael McIntosh who headed the Foundation, and Joseph Onek, then Director of the Center for Law and Social Policy in Washington, D.C. Later that first year, Onek resigned and former Governor LeRoy Collins and Roderick N. Petrey, now head of the Collins Center, agreed to serve. In 1978, Randolph Thrower, a former IRS Commissioner who headed the effort to draft the first regulations for not-for-profit public interest law firms, joined. Many other presitigous persons have since served on the Board, including former Presidents of The Florida Bar and the American Bar Association, former Governors, a U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals justice, and two Florida Supreme Court justices.
SLC has had three Executive Directors: Albert J. Hadeed (1977-1988); Alice K. Nelson (1988-2004); and Jodi Siegel (2004-present).