During her opening trial statement, Sherylle Gordon was so nervous that she felt nauseous.

The 36-year-old Miami law firm associate was arguing a civil rights case in April 2005 before U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas and a 12-person jury. She says she kept thinking about how her client, convicted felon Henry LaFavors, was counting on her to prove his claim that Broward Sheriff's Office deputies allowed a police dog to attack and injure him during his arrest on outstanding felony warrants even though he had already been subdued.

It was new territory for Gordon, a commercial litigator at Clarke Silverglate Campbell Williams & Montgomery. She had no civil rights law experience and no experience as lead attorney in a jury trial. "You go in and you think, 'I'm going to hurl,' " Gordon recalled with a laugh. "But every day it got better."

Gordon got that trial experience through the Volunteer Lawyers' Program, which is sponsored by the nonprofit Florida Justice Institute and partly funded by The Florida Bar Foundation. The program provides private legal representation to hundreds of indigent Floridians each year in civil and criminal cases. Since 1978, the Florida Justice Institute has brought class action lawsuits in areas such as housing discrimination and prisoner civil rights.

In return for giving their lawyers the time to handle these pro bono cases, Florida law firms obtain much-needed trial experience for their young lawyers. It's a win-win that represents the pro bono ideals of the legal profession, which Florida lawyers emphasized last week during the annual Law Week activities.

The observance, conducted across the country, is designed to celebrate the founding principles of the U.S. legal system. This year, The Florida Bar used Law Week to promote the need for more civics education so that people understand the three separate and equal branches of government and how they check each other's powers.

"This is a great opportunity for young lawyers or inexperienced lawyers to get into court and try a case before a federal judge, before a real jury, with a real client, and something at stake," said Randall Berg, an attorney who serves as executive director of the 28-year-old Florida Justice Institute.

The justice institute is housed in free space provided by Carlton Fields. It occupies more than 3,200 square feet on one of the four floors of Carlton Fields' downtown Miami office. It moved in last December. During the previous 19 years, the institute worked out of the downtown Miami offices of Steel Hector & Davis, which merged last year with Squire Sanders & Dempsey.

The institute also gets access to facilities, attorneys and personnel at Carlton Fields' six other offices in Florida and the one location in Atlanta, Berg said. They also share law libraries and access to lawyers with specialized fields.

"Certainly, we think there is a real advantage to getting lawyers out on their feet and doing things that trial lawyers do," said Benjamine Reid, chairman of Carlton Fields' board of directors and a partner in the Miami office. "It's creating the next generation of trial lawyers."

"We take these cases not only because it provides good pro bono service but it helps our lawyers get trial experience," said Charles Rosenberg, managing partner of Carlton Fields' Miami office.

Berg said he and his staff appreciate the first-class office space Carlton Fields is providing, particularly given the nature of the work they do. "I mean, when we go out and deal with clients, often we're in prison, so it's nice to come back to nice digs," he said.

SCARED OF FAILING CLIENT

Another young Miami lawyer who received valuable trial experience through the Florida Justice Institute is Kristy Johnson.

Johnson, 36, a new partner at Carlton Fields, recently experienced the anxiety of serving for the first time as lead counsel in a federal jury trial. In March, she argued a federal civil rights case on behalf of inmate Carlos Mendoza, who claimed that state corrections officers denied him treatment for asthma and aggravated his condition by deliberately blowing smoke in his cell.

She said she was afraid of angering U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro-Benages, of embarrassing herself and, most of all, of failing her client. Shepherding a case through trial brought her face to face with the emotional, mental and physical challenges of handling herself in front of a judge and jury.

"You don't learn that kind of stuff watching 'Law & Order' or watching other lawyers do it," Johnson said. "You have to go through the experience yourself, the good and the bad."

Both Gordon and Johnson have played second chair to veteran partners in their respective firms, but neither had ever had the practical experience of being lead counsel on a trial. "It's hard for an attorney at my level to get that first-chair, jury trial experience," Johnson said.

The lawyers walk away with skills they can use for the benefit of paying clients. Berg said it's a unique opportunity that is usually only available to those who work in the state or federal public defender's offices.

In an era of increased mediation, arbitration and settlements, fewer attorneys are getting the chance to serve as lead trial counsel early in their careers. Rosenberg and Reid call it the problem of the "vanishing trial." Berg said "mediation has killed getting to trial."

"As they get these trial experiences under their belt, they begin to develop more quickly, and they're much more polished lawyers than those who don't have that opportunity," Rosenberg said.

The Volunteer Lawyers' Program is essentially a matchmaking service for plaintiffs and attorneys looking to clock some pro bono and trial time.

The program gets its cases from either perusing pro se filings or referrals from federal district judges. Some pro se complaints can be frivolous. But Berg said his staff does what he calls "post-complaint discovery" to find out whether the case has merit.

Berg said his organization also tries to recruit a pro bono attorney if a pro se litigant's case has survived initial challenges and is getting close to going to trial.

Berg, who has worked with the Florida Justice Institute since its founding, said the organization's role is to "represent the unrepresented." The group has been called the "lawyers of last resort." Last year, it represented women who settled for $6.25 million in a class action suit alleging they had been needlessly strip-searched at the Miami-Dade County Jail.

Reid himself worked with the Florida Justice Institute on a recent case. He served as lead counsel in a civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Miami brought by a group of Hondurans who claimed the Honduran military kidnapped, tortured or killed them or relatives.

The colonel in charge of the soldiers who committed these human rights cases was found liable for his troops' actions by default and was ordered to pay $47 million. But he was deported by the United States, and the judgment is probably uncollectible.

Gordon and Johnson walked away with skills they now can use in representing paying clients. Of course, a more senior attorney was on their case as an adviser. Berg said the program provides the kind of trial experience that now is mainly available to young prosecutors and public defenders.

Both Gordon and Johnson said that while they welcomed the chance to gain federal trial experience, they really accepted the cases because they felt their clients deserved good representation for their grievances.

Gordon, who's black, said that when she met LaFavors, she said she didn't see a 48-year-old black man with five felony convictions. She saw someone that her young son could grow up to be if his life goes down the wrong path. "It was like looking at the worst possible thing that could happen to my son, except maybe death," she said.

It was that personal commitment Gordon said, that kept her going during the preparation for the case and the weeklong trial.

She won a $35,000 jury verdict for Gordon. When the verdict was announced, Gordon and her client enjoyed a thrilling moment. "I'm sitting there," she said, "and he leans over and plants the biggest, loudest kiss on my cheek."

But in the end, Judge Dimitrouleas issued a judgment notwithstanding the verdict on the grounds that the Broward Sheriff's Office and its employees enjoyed qualified immunity. His ruling later was upheld by an appellate court. And that was part of the learning experience for Gordon.

"You know, the law is the law," she said.