Most attorneys who handle guardianship aren’t board certified in elder law. The certification is rare for a reason — the Florida Bar makes it hard to get and hard to keep.
Jill on what it actually requires:
Florida has 27 board certification specialty areas. Elder law is one of them. To become certified, an attorney has to: practice law for at least five years, dedicate at least 40% of their practice to elder law for the three years immediately preceding application, demonstrate substantial involvement in the field, complete 50 hours of approved continuing legal education in elder law during the three years preceding application, submit peer reviews from other attorneys and judges, and pass a written examination.
The certification has to be renewed every five years through a recertification application. Continuing education requirements continue throughout. Any disciplinary issue gets reported to the certification committee. The Florida Bar can revoke certification for cause.
What this means in practice: a board-certified elder law attorney has demonstrated, on the record, that they actually do this work — not occasionally, not as a sideline, but as their actual practice. That’s a different signal than “elder law” appearing on a website.
The work Jill described — writing the elder law certification examination as a member of the Florida Bar’s elder law committee for six years — is a layer beyond certification. The committee that writes the exam is the committee that defines what an elder law specialist needs to know. Most certified attorneys never serve on it.
For consumers, the practical question is: does it matter? Sometimes it doesn’t. A lot of legal work doesn’t require a specialist. A simple will, a basic POA, a non-contested probate — these are handled competently by general practitioners every day.
Guardianship isn’t one of those areas. The procedural complexity, the statutory framework, the litigation overlay, the fiduciary obligations, and the volume of mistakes that get made by attorneys who don’t handle these cases regularly — all of it argues for hiring someone who specializes. Board certification isn’t the only signal of specialization, but it’s one of the few that’s verifiable.
If you’re hiring a guardianship attorney and they don’t handle these cases regularly, you’ll often find out the hard way — at the first hearing where they don’t know the procedural rule, or at the first accounting where the restricted depository wasn’t set up, or at the first appeal where the trial record can’t be cleaned up.