LegalFuel Podcast Explores Benefits and Requirements of Board Certification
The Florida Bar News December 18, 2025
Board certification validates an attorney’s expert knowledge, skill, and experience, helping consumers identify legal specialists in 27 different areas of practice. Although the certification program has been an option for over four decades, only around 4% of Florida Bar members are board certified.
In “Board Certification: Elevating Your Firm (And You!),” a free CLE podcast offered by LegalFuel, Lisa McNelis, a partner at the South Florida law firm of Roselli & McNelis, who has been board certified in Civil Trial Law since 1996 and currently serves as chair of The Florida Bar Civil Trial Certification Committee, discusses the requirements and benefits of board certification with hosts Autumn Chadwell and Jamie Moore.
“Certification, in my opinion, is a wonderful gift to yourself, to acknowledge that you’ve attained the top level of your profession and…recertification require[s] you to hold yourself accountable to continue to learn and practice at the highest level of competence so you can best serve your clients,” says McNelis.
Requirements vary for the different areas of law, she says, and she advises checking The Florida Bar website for the specific requirements for your field. Specific requirements for board certification in each of the 27 different areas can be found in The Rules Regulating The Florida Bar, section 6-4 through section 6-31. Recertification, regardless of specialty area, is required every five years.
“I encourage the younger lawyers to start now keeping track of your work and the cases or the trials or the memos that you’ve created,” because this information will be needed in the application for certification and it’s easier to keep a running record of your progress than it is to remember and gather information retrospectively, she says.
McNelis offers examples of requirements from her specialty, civil trial law.
- Minimum of five years of experience.
- Peer review from six lawyers, including one from a judge you have appeared before in the past two years.
- “Substantial involvement in your specialty” with more than 50% of your practice in the specialty for the three years preceding your application date.
- Minimum of 15 contested civil trial cases before a jury, which can include up to two county court cases in which the jury renders a verdict (non-jury county court cases don’t qualify), five serving as lead counsel, handling voir dire, opening, closing, or direct examination.
- 50 hours of approved CLE credits in the three years prior to applying.
- Written exam covering litigation skills, the evidence code, the ethics code, and civil procedure.
McNelis notes that the Civil Trial Committee sponsors a certification seminar review for applicants preparing to take the Civil Trial Law board certification exam.
“Board Certification: Elevating Your Firm (And You!) | LegalFuel” has been approved by The Florida Bar Continuing Legal Education Department for 1.0 hour of General CLE credit.
REFERENCED RESOURCES:
VIEWS AND CONCLUSIONS EXPRESSED IN ARTICLES HEREIN ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHORS AND NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF FLORIDA BAR STAFF, OFFICIALS, OR BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FLORIDA BAR.