Super Lawyers - Florida 2011

helping his career. “I’ve been fortunate,”
he says. “In doing good things, it’s been
good for business.”
While he’s a zealous advocate,
Talenfeld also prides himself on working
cooperatively with public officials and
lawyers on the other side to meet children’s
needs. In a case that he worked on for
years, Talenfeld persuaded the state to
award a young boy born with severe brain
damage—who will never walk or talk—an
unusually high adoption subsidy so a nurse
who had long served as his foster mother
could adopt him. When the adoption
was finalized, the various participants,
including the secretaries of the two state
agencies, attended the official adoption
ceremony. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the
house,” Sen. Rich says. “That’s the kind of
thing Howard is able to accomplish.”
On the policy front, Talenfeld’s big push,
together with The Florida Bar and Florida’s
Children First, is to convince the Legislature
to pay for mandatory legal representation
of certain groups of high-needs children in
dependency court. Florida is one of only 10
states that don’t require legal representation
for dependent children. “The parents have
a lawyer, the state has a lawyer, even the
guardian ad litem has a lawyer,” he says.
“The only party who doesn’t have a lawyer is
the child, whose life is totally affected.”
Talenfeld chaired the bar committee
that recommended legal representation.
But it hasn’t been easy to organize
attorneys and child advocates around
unified positions on this and other issues.
“They all think they know what’s best
for kids,” he says. “It’s like the Crusades.
Everyone thinks the way they believe in
God is the only way to believe in God.”
Rich affectionately notes Talenfeld himself
is pretty sure he knows what’s best. And
even though she doesn’t fully agree with him
on the legal representation issue—largely
because of state budget pressures—she
believes he couldn’t have accomplished all
he’s done without his passion and intensity.
“I’d call him [a] super child advocate,” she
says. “It takes someone like that to really
move the system.”