With its easy-to-navigate table of contents, concise on-point writing, and abundant practical features, LexisNexis Practice Guide: Florida DUI Law provides an excellent source to help attorneys find answers to their questions about Florida DUI practice:
• Combines on-point coverage of the law with practical, how-to insights developed through the authors’ years of practice experience.
• Within each chapter, warnings, timing alerts, strategic points, and exceptions point out potential issues and help prevent practice missteps.
• Checklists highlights important considerations and procedural steps in building a case.
• The forms appendix contains dozens of sample forms for use in your DUI practice.
• Annual updating with replacement volumes ensures that all coverage remains current.
Q. Why this book, and why now?
This book is the sequel, if you will, to Bobby Reiff’s and my initial work, Drunk Driving and Related Vehicular Offenses: The Complete Lawyer’s Guidebook to Drunk Driving Defense, which we published in 1997. When LexisNexis asked in 2016 that we pare it down to its essentials for their Practice Guide Series, we happily took on the challenge, creating an easy-to-navigate, no-nonsense, cutting-edge practitioners’ guide.
Q. Who should read this book?
Prosecutors, criminal defense counsel, civil lawyers, plaintiff and defense, and judges interested in bettering their understanding of, approach to, and effectiveness in the pretrial litigation and courtroom adjudication of cases involving DUI and related vehicular offenses.
Q. What is the most important takeaway you hope your readers gain from this book?
That this is a complex, heavily-legislated, high-stakes area of the law that requires expertise at all levels of proceedings.
Q. How did you decide on the title and cover art?
That’s the publisher’s doing, I’m afraid. I can take no credit for that.
Now in his 32nd year as a trial lawyer and 21st year of full-time law teaching, H. Scott Fingerhut is a three-time Professor of the Year and two-time Pioneer Award winner at FIU College of Law in Miami, where he teaches Criminal Procedure, Trial Advocacy, and Criminal and Civil Pretrial Practice. In court, he devotes his practice to criminal defense, trial and appeal, and representing applicants seeking admission before the Florida Board of Bar Examiners and lawyers facing Florida Bar discipline. Rated AV Preeminent by Martindale-Hubbell, he is consistently ranked among the region’s top criminal defense lawyers, including The Best Lawyers in America. He has had the distinction of twice serving as chair of The Florida Bar Criminal Procedure Rules Committee and has also served as chair of the Criminal Law Section of the Bar. Currently he is a member of The Bar’s Professional Ethics Committee, the Criminal Law Section Executive Council, and a State of Florida Eleventh Judicial Circuit Professionalism Panel. He has also served as a member of The Florida Bar Committee to Study the Decline in Jury Trials, The Bar’s Committee on Student Education and Admission to the Bar, The Florida Supreme Court Criminal Court Steering Committee Workgroup on Post-Conviction Relief, the Editorial Board of The Florida Bar Journal and Florida Bar News, and, by appointment of the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, the Florida Innocence Commission. And most recently, he has been invited to present to groups and organizations across Florida – including the federal judiciary of the Eleventh Circuit — on the need for lawyers to “Take Back Truth in an Age of ‘Literal Truthiness.’” He received his undergraduate degree in American Government and Music from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and his law degree from Emory University in Atlanta. Before entering private practice, Professor Fingerhut proudly served as a prosecutor in Janet Reno’s Miami-Dade County State Attorney’s Office. He is the recipient of the “Put Something Back” Pro Bono Award from the Dade County Bar, the Daniel S. Pearson-Harry W. Prebish Founders Award from the Miami Chapter of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Steven M. Goldstein Criminal Justice Award from FACDL Statewide. Six times Professor Fingerhut has been selected by the FIU College of Law graduating class to hood them at Commencement. And last year, the graduates chose him to deliver their inaugural “Last Lecture,” an event held during Pre-Commencement exercises.