A Message from the Executive Director
The Legal Road Less Traveled
The ELC is not your typical law firm or your typical environmental group. We exist
because about 10 years ago, a small group of young, idealistic environmental lawyers and law
professors agreed that Florida’s environment sorely needed a good lawyer. So they created a
strange creature - a not for profit law firm - to try to help fill the great need for affordable
lawyers to represent the environmental side of growth and development disputes. For the first
few years of its life, the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Center did what it could with
its limited funding to advance the cause of public interest legal representation.
Then along came the Shepard Broad Law Center at Nova Southeastern University in Ft.
Lauderdale, an institution with dedication and a proven track record of providing public interest
representation through its legal clinics. In 1994, when I was looking to relocate to south Florida
where I grew up, I was given the opportunity to run the law school’s environmental clinic under
the auspices of my previous employer 1000 Friends of Florida (today one of the ELC’s closest
allies). Soon thereafter, on a fateful August Sunday at Sanibel Island after one of our annual
environmental law conferences, the founders of that public interest law firm agreed to hire me to
run the organization. We changed the name, sought some grants, took on some clients and
never looked back.
After more than a decade, this marriage between representing the environment in legal
battles and educating aspiring environmental lawyers, is flourishing. It has given me the greatest
job a lawyer and teacher could have, and has helped level the playing field in south Florida -
which is the major league of environmental battles in this country. What started as a one person
firm with no bank account is now a force that must be reckoned with by government and
developers. Because of the support from committed individuals and forward thinking
foundations, we have grown to three lawyers in south Florida. The resulting legal work has
made growth limits in the Keys a reality, stopped plans for a commercial airport between two
national parks in Homestead, and, reduced to rubble a multimillion dollar development that
violated Florida’s Growth Management Act.
In April 2006, we changed our name to the Everglades Law Center. After much thought,
we determined that our former name was regularly mangled by reporters and decision-makers,
and it told little about our mission: defending Florida’s ecosystems and communities. All of the
places where we work today are tied together by this expansive, diverse Everglades ecosystem,
its rivers, estuaries and bays, and we have always taken a system-wide approach to our work.
We think the new name will help tie it all together in the eyes of the public as well.
The ELC exists so that courts, administrative bodies and politicians will consistently hear
from a lawyer who speaks for - and isn’t afraid to sue on behalf of - the environment. We can’t
be in every legal fight, but we try to be in all of the important ones. We also try to provide some
basic legal knowledge and guidance to anyone who is trying to assert the environmental or
public interest side of the argument. Our style is to take aggressive positions in defense of our
ecological and community health, but in a manner that is respectful of opposing interests and the
decision-makers it is our job to influence. We hope that you will find the resources we provide
on this web site of use and that you will consider supporting our efforts to be the good lawyer
that the environment surely needs. We are a small organization, but we make a big impact, so no
contribution to help the environment is too small. We all need to do our share to protect and
restore our environment and make this a better place for our children.
Richard Grosso
Executive Director
Everglades Law Center, Inc.