CHICAGO, Aug. 3, 2021 — The American Bar Association Solo, Small Firm and General Practice Division will honor Anthony C. Musto with its 2021 Solo and Small Firm Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes the efforts and accomplishments of outstanding solo and small firm practitioners as well as bar leaders and associations.
The award will be presented to Musto at 12:45-1:45 p.m. CDT Friday, Aug. 6, at a virtual award presentation during the 2021 ABA Hybrid Annual Meeting.
This award recognizes exceptional lifetime achievement by a solo or small firm practitioner who is widely accepted by peers as having consistently achieved distinction in an exemplary way. The recipients are viewed by other solo and small firm practitioners as epitomizing the ideals of the legal profession and of solo and small firm practitioners.
Musto has a primarily appellate practice in Hallandale Beach, Florida. He is an adjunct professor of law at St. Thomas University School of Law, where he taught full time for 11 years. Musto is a fellow of both the American Bar Foundation and the Florida Bar Foundation, a member of the ABA Senior Lawyer Division Council and a co-executive director of the ABA Criminal Justice Section Specialized Practice Division.
He has served as president of Florida Legal Services, Inc., was a member of the board of directors of the Florida Bar Foundation and was a member of the ABA Commission on Youth at Risk, Standing Committee on Professionalism and Criminal Justice Section council. He was also a member of the Supreme Court of Florida Commission on Professionalism and the Committee on Standard Jury Instructions in Criminal Cases. He is a past chair of the appellate practice, criminal law, government lawyer and public interest law sections of The Florida Bar, the bar’s council of sections, the Florida Criminal Procedure Rules Committee and the Florida Rules of Judicial Administration Committee.
Musto is a former city commissioner for the City of Hallandale Beach, was chief counsel of the Florida attorney general’s Miami office, and was chief appellate counsel of the Broward County Attorney’s Office.
Musto organized the first national conference on professionalism for government lawyers, establishing statewide pro bono programs to provide representation for children aging out of foster care and for human trafficking victims seeking sealing or expunction of criminal records. He wrote, submitted and successfully argued in favor of the rule adopted by the Supreme Court of Florida requiring the use of recycled paper for documents filed in the state court system, a rule that resulted in the saving of an estimated 850,000 trees annually.
In addition, Musto developed and coordinated the Broward County Attorney’s Office pro bono program, which became a model for public agencies throughout the nation and received ABA Pro Bono Publico Award and the Supreme Court of Florida Chief Justice’s Law Firm Commendation. Musto also is president of the Hallandale Symphonic Pops Orchestra. For a photo of Musto, click here.
With more than 10,000 members, the ABA Solo, Small Firm and General Practice Division (GPSolo) is committed to providing unique resources exclusively for solo, small-firm and general practitioners, who represent half of the nation’s lawyers.
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