Richard J. Burton

The Burton Firm, P.A. was founded in 1982 by Richard J. Burton — a trial lawyer who began his career as a public defender and never outgrew the instinct. He represented the beaten, the battered, and the underdogs: the clients other lawyers had already turned away, sometimes twice. Every case was large to him, and he fought each one as if his reputation depended on it. Because to him, it did.

His career ranged from Watergate-era matters to proceedings before the World Court, and from there back to the ordinary family that needed someone who would not quit. He was the lawyer people sought after their first or second attorney had given up. At the University of Miami, he organized mass student protests in the 1960s, helped authorities prevent an attempt to bomb campus facilities, and founded a student organization challenging the very honor society that would later induct him — for embodying its spirit of courage, conscience, and loyalty.

He was, by every account, larger than life: brilliant, stubborn, hilarious, unrelenting, and — to those who didn’t know him — an acquired taste. Once you were in his circle, he would fight for you forever.

Read the obituary in the Miami Herald →