Surviving a Disaster II: Upholding Your Ethical Duty to Protect Clients, Privileged Documents, and Court Records Before and After a Disaster Strikes

Elizabeth Clark Tarbert has been Ethics Counsel for The Florida Bar since 1997, providing oral and written ethics opinions to members of The Florida Bar and advising the Professional Ethics Committee, Standing Committee on Advertising, and Board Review Committee on Professional Ethics. She has also served as counsel to numerous special bar committees such as the Special Committee on Multidisciplinary Practice, Ancillary Business Special Committee, Special Committee to Review the ABA Model Rules 2002, and several ad-vertising task forces.

Before becoming Ethics Counsel, she served as Assistant Ethics Counsel from 1994 to 1995, she has been an Assistant Public Defender in both Dallas, Texas and with the Eighth Judicial Circuit in Gainesville, Florida. While at the Defense Contract Management District Mid-Atlantic, Defense Logistics Agency in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ms. Tarbert worked in a special fraud remedies unit, assisting in the investigation and prosecution of government contractors.

Ms. Tarbert graduated from the University of Florida College of Law with honors and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of Florida. She frequently speaks on legal ethics and professional responsibility.

Alfreda D. Coward is a partner of Coward & Coward, P.A., a law firm in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She practices with her sister, Kimberly D. Coward, primarily representing clients in the areas of criminal law, family law and municipal representation. Prior to starting her own practice, she served as an Assistant Public Defender for eight years. During her approximate twenty-one years as an attorney, Ms. Coward has had well over 200 jury trials. Some of these trials were recorded and aired on Court TV, MSNBC and NBC Dateline.

In addition to Coward & Coward, P.A., Ms. Coward currently serves as the co-founder of One Voice Children’s Law Center. One Voice Children’s Law Center is a non-profit organization that represents kids that have pending matters in the dependency, delinquency and/or educational systems.

Ms. Coward is very active in the American Bar Association having served in numerous leadership positions with the Section of Litigation, the General Practice, Solo & Small Firm Division and the Young Lawyers Division. This year, she serves on the Council for the Section of Litigation and the Council for the GP, Solo & Small Firm Division.

Ms. Coward is also active in her local community where she serves as President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Broward County Alumnae Chapter, and past president of the T.J. Reddick Bar Association. She also serves as the First Vice-Chair of the Broward County Early Learning Coalition. Even more, she served as a member of The Florida Bar Juvenile Rules Committee, a member of the School-to-Jail Statewide Initiative and a member of the American Cancer Society, Broward County Operating Board.

Not surprisingly, she has received many accolades for her contributions to the community and the profession. Some awards bestowed upon have included the Nation’s Best Advocates, Child Advocate of the Year and 25 Most Influential and Prominent Black Women in Business.

Ms. Coward is a graduate of the University of Florida, where she received her Juris Doctorate Degree in 1995 and her Bachelor of Science Degree in Psychology in 1992. Ms. Coward is a member of The Florida Bar. She is also admitted to practice in the United States District Courts for the Northern, Middle and Southern Districts of Florida.

Melanie’s legal career began as a Briefing Attorney for the 14th Court of Appeals in Houston, Texas where she researched and helped draft published legal opinions. In those early years she did criminal court appointments while learning the ropes in the other Houston courts. The judges appointed her to determine the best interest of children, the elderly, and the mentally incapacited.

She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. She went to law school in Houston and became involved in bar association activities on the local, state, and national levels. She became the first woman president of the Houston Young Lawyers Association and was a director of the ABA Young Lawyers Division.

In 1993, Melanie formed a company called Legal Insight, Inc. and wrote and performed in ten legal education programs for the University of Texas Health Science Center, all of which were broadcast on their closed-circuit television network. Two of the programs caught the eye of national distributors and they have been distributing Melanie’s legal education programs to hospitals, universities, and healthcare organizations nationwide since. Her titles are Charting Medical Record’s: Do’s & Don’ts to Avoid Liability; HIPAA Legal Liability Issues; HIPAA: Privacy & Security In Depth; Informed Consent Legal Liability Issues; Emergency Care Legal Liability Issues; and What You Should Know About Living Wills. Educating the public and professionals about best practices is a favorite part of Melanie’s law career.