What Makes Super Lawyers Listees Super?

One attorney had a python dangling from her kitchen chandelier. Another once impersonated Elvis on a Vegas stage—and could prep a Domino’s pizza in 44 seconds flat. Yet another tried to bring Anna Nicole Smith’s body home to Texas.  

 Those are just a few of the attorneys I’ve met over the last decade-and-a-half writing for Super Lawyers magazines. I’ve come across stories of persistence, of resistance, and of dedication to the greater good. Sometimes all in the same attorney. 

There’s been a real variety over the years, from across the practice spectrum. Some have been nationally known; some internationally. All of them deserve to be.

Benjamin Crump was practically a household name by the time I sat down with him at his Tallahassee law firm. I’d seen him on TV, next to the grieving parents of Martin Lee Anderson, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. But some of his most noteworthy cases were yet to come; Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd would thrust him ever more prominently to the forefront of a national debate over police misconduct. 

Despite his celebrity, though, I remember being struck by how down-to-earth he seemed; how he bowed his head and said grace over a takeout order of Chick-fil-A nuggets and fries.

He and the other trailblazers had trajectories with an often outsized impact on others.

Steve Brannock and Celene Humphries helped preserve the “Engle progeny” ruling, which meant that every time an individual from a 1994 class action lawsuit (later decertified) filed on behalf of 8,000 smokers sued a tobacco company, they didn’t have to first go to the effort of proving yet again that cigarettes are bad for you.

Raquel Rodriguez lived up to her nickname, Rocky, in the infamous 2000 Bush-Gore Florida recount battle, which helped decide the outcome of the presidential race. 

Others made themselves felt not just with the cases they handled but the paths they pioneered. Eugene Pettis was the Florida Bar’s first Black president (in 2013). 

And there was the former Florida Supreme Court justice who went to law school dreaming of being John Grisham. The law was actually Raoul Cantero’s backup plan. Instead, his writing talents led to an appellate career and, at age 41, to becoming one of the youngest justices in the court’s history, and its first Hispanic member. 

“From this day forward, our children know that they can aspire to any position in the state—indeed, in this country,” he said at his investiture.

Most didn’t seek celebrity. Some, like Roberta Mandel, found it nonetheless. Pulled into the fight over where to bury Anna Nicole Smith—a former Playboy centerfold and octogenarian billionaire’s widow—Mandel found herself in the limelight because of a comment on the courthouse steps. 

“I said, ‘My client, Virgie Arthur, shouldn’t have to get a passport to go visit her daughter in the cemetery,’” Mandel recalled. 

The Elvis impersonator was Elisa D. Garcia C., Domino’s Pizza’s first general counsel. She took the stage at a company franchisee’s meeting, decked out in a sequined white jumpsuit, thick black sideburns and, of course, a ducktail. It was the CEO’s idea. He also insisted she learn the business by doing everything from prepping to delivering pizzas. 

“He taught me that I wasn’t just a lawyer,” she says. “That my opinion in every area was not only valued, but expected.”

I also spent time with a charmingly blunt lawyer who was the first Black woman editor-in-chief of a Harvard law review, the first Black woman hired at not one but two distinguished firms, and the first Black woman partner at Berger Singerman. 

“I’ve done work that’s made people’s lives better,” Elaine Johnson James told me. “The joy and the comfort that that gives me at this stage of my career more than overshadow the crap I’ve had to take in order to do the work.” 

The attorney with the python in her chandelier—along with more than a dozen others around the house—could make a similar claim. 

When Jeanne Tate got her first job at a Tampa firm in the early ’80s, women weren’t allowed at the University Club, where the male firm members met for lunch. 

“I could be a waitress there, but I couldn’t eat there,” she noted.

Being excluded led to her flourishing in a niche the men had ignored. Tate built a family law practice that handles adoptions and surrogacies, while also running an adoption agency. 

Thanks to her, more than 4,000 children have found forever homes, including hard-to-place disabled and terminally ill children.

“I think of all the kids out there that don’t have a family,” she says, tearing up. “I can’t think of a greater gift to give any child than a family.”

Each of these attorneys taught me something important: The thing that made them Super Lawyers listees wasn’t just caring about the law. It was caring about people. 

And that’s something I’m always happy to write about.

Carlos Harrison is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, two-time Emmy nominee, professional actor, and author of 22 books ranging from biographies to legal issues (e.g., The Ghosts of Hero Street, Trained to Kill, The Memorandum). His articles have appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and People. Several of his articles for Super Lawyers have won awards from the Society for Professional Journalists.