JANE KREUSLER-WALSH’S
Secret to Appellate Success
Edits, edits, edits … then more edits
BY STAN SINBERG
PHOTOGRAPHY BY SCOTT WISEMAN
JANE KREUSLER-WALSH
· FOUNDER, KREUSLER-WALSH,
COMPIANI & VARGAS
· APPELLATE
· FLORIDA SUPER LAWYERS: 2006–
2011; TOP 100: 2008, 2010–2011;
TOP 50 WOMEN: 2007–2008,
2010–2011
· FELLOW, THE AMERICAN
ACADEMY OF APPELLATE
ATTORNEYS
There was a time when Jane
Kreusler-Walsh’s boss worried
about whether he would have
enough business to keep her
employed, even part time.
As a perk, he moved the copy
machine out of a windowless
storeroom and replaced it with
a desk so the fledgling attorney
wouldn’t have to keep working
out of the courthouse library.
She got a case representing an
insurance company in one of the least
appealing appeals imaginable: arguing
that a woman who had been beaten and
robbed—then run over and killed after
crawling to the highway for help—was
partly negligent because her blood-alcohol
level exceeded the legal limit. Kreusler-Walsh had to argue that the original verdict
for the woman’s family was excessive.
She barely got her own name out of her
mouth before the presiding judge on the
panel said, “Mrs. Walsh, I really don’t think
much of your position.”
Despite her snappy and bravura
comeback—“That’s fine, Your Honor, I’ll just
talk to the other judges”—she was handed
a PCA (per curiam affirmed without
opinion), the legal equivalent of “don’t let
the door hit you on the way out.”
Kreusler-Walsh felt dreadful, and vowed
never again to take a case that she didn’t
believe in. From there, her career went in
the only direction it could—up—literally
and figuratively. Today, she owns that same
law firm, now Kreusler-Walsh, Compiani &
Vargas, three floors above the offices where
she worked out of the copy room.
