Chesterfield Smith Eminent Scholar Chair

Chesterfield Smith

The Holland and Knight Law firm, clients and friends established this professorship to honor Chesterfield Smith, a 1948 University of Florida law graduate who was founder and chairman emeritus of Holland & Knight, the country’s eighth largest law firm and a supporter of UF’s law school.

Smith was one of four UF law school graduates who headed the American Bar Association. He served as president in 1973, nine years after he headed the Florida Bar. At the end of his American Bar Association tenure, a national committee including six former ABA presidents was formed to raise funds to establish the Chesterfield Smith Professorship of Law at his alma mater.

While in law school, Smith was a member of Order of the Coif, Florida Blue Key, Phi Delta Phi and Phi Kappa Phi, and served until his death as a trustee of the Law Center Association. He also was a past president of the Law Review Alumni Association, member of board of advisers of the law school’s Center for Governmental Responsibility and frequent law school commencement speaker. Smith passed away in July 2003.