Jacksonville Attorney: Elizabeth L. White

Since 1980, Elizabeth "Betsy" White has established an excellent and widespread reputation as a top lawyer in the fields of criminal defense, civil rights, and appeals. Her experience includes extensive litigation on behalf of criminal defendants as well as litigation to protect the constitutional and civil rights of individuals and groups, including women, minorities and prisoners. She has litigated at all levels of the judicial system, including the United States Supreme Court. For example, she has extensively litigated on behalf of criminal defendants in both the federal and state courts in various jurisdictions, including a substantial body of complex death penalty litigation and in representing clients in numerous state and federal appeals.

Ms. White's academic stature allowed her to begin college at the age of 16 at Jacksonville University, from which she received her undergraduate degree cum laude, at age 19. Following law school at the University of Oregon, at age 22, she became one of the youngest people admitted to practice in both Florida and Oregon. Upon admission to the Bar, Ms. White became one of the first female private criminal defense attorneys in Northeast Florida. Her litigation experience has always been as a defender, having had no desire to participate in the incarceration of individuals. She has litigated sexual assault cases for 29 years and has represented numerous individuals charged with related internet offenses. She argued Doggett v. United States, 906 F.2d 573 (11th Cir. 1990), before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals and successfully obtained certiorari review from the United States Supreme Court in that case. She has also litigated a number of grand jury subpoena issues throughout the federal system and traveled extensively during the course of her federal practice.

Throughout her years of practice, Ms. White has devoted large amounts of her time to pro bono litigation on behalf of those least likely to obtain free legal services. For instance, she observed and filled a need for legal services for teenage women in the Fourth Judicial Circuit who sought judicial waivers of parental consent for the termination of pregnancies. As a result, she began representing these young people, at her own expense, and enlisted the aid of the other members of her law firm and the Bar in doing so as well. Further, she provided training to other lawyers who subsequently began providing representation in such cases.

Because of such accomplishments, Ms. White has gained considerable peer recognition, such as her "AV" rating by Martindale-Hubbell and her listing in Best Lawyers in America in the fields of appellate law, non-white-collar criminal defense law and white-collar criminal defense law. Ms. White has been selected to be a member of the National Trial Lawyers. Membership into this organization is limited to the top one hundred attorneys from each state that practice exclusively civil plaintiff or criminal defense law. She is also a former member of the Board of Directors of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and was a member of the Florida First District Judicial Nominating Commission from 1998 to 2002. For nine years, she also lectured and prepared course materials for the Criminal Law Certification Review Course presented annually by the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. She is admitted to practice law in both Florida and Oregon and in the United States Supreme Court, the United States Eleventh and Fifth Circuit Courts of Appeal, and the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. She also has been admitted to practice in numerous state and federal courts pro hac vice during her extensive representation of individuals charged with offenses outside the State of Florida.

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