Leslie Ferderigos was back on with me after being interviewed in March of 2022.
At the time, Leslie, a Florida attorney, was facing discipline from the Florida BAR.
I first met Leslie in 2021, when she represented in Gabe Shapiro in a Miami-Dade divorce and child custody matter. Check out the interview with Gabe below: starting approximately thirty-eight minutes in.
This case, Leslie explained, may have played a significant role in her current BAR troubles.
Representing the other side was Dori Foster-Morales, who was the outgoing president of the Florida BAR.
After her client, Patsy Alcantar, fired her, Patsy also disclosed to Leslie that Dori made it her mission to get Leslie disbarred.
{Dori was joined on the case by Anastasia Garcia who popped up on Scott Segal’s case}
I reached out to Dori, but she did not respond to my email.
Before Leslie worked on Gabe’s case, she did a lot of work on guardianship abuse. In fact, she freed six people from guardianship throughout Florida.
Leslie Ferderigos is an attorney practicing out of Florida; she said she ran into a guardianship abuse by accident, when a victim called her.
“I thought it was a Baker Act,” she said.
Baker Act refers to a Florida law which allows for someone to be held involuntarily in a psych ward.
Instead, she learned the person was in guardianship against their will.
She said she’s been inundated with cases since; she’s been able to reverse six guardianship rulings in 2021, turning her into a star in that niche.
In November and December 2020, she appeared on two news programs talking about guardianship abuse. In December 2020, she also gave a speech to the Palm Beach Clerk of Courts Office about guardianship abuse.
“I became a whistleblower,” Leslie told me.
Days after the news program in December ran, Leslie told me she received the first of several BAR complaints. The first batch of complaints were from guardianship lawyers and guardians.
The complaints appear to be frivolous. She missed a couple hearings and was late in filing an appeal.
She is also being held liable for a financial disclosure which her client handed in but was determined to be incomplete.
Finally, after a court reporter made an errouenous date in a transcript, Leslie filed a motion which the BAR claims is fraudulent based on this erroneous date.
Leslie said she withdrew the motion when the faulty date was discovered but the BAR complaint remains.
Dori charged her client approximately $400,000 over about three years but she never faced discipline.
Leslie also told me that the BAR has used her mental disorder, bi-polar, to smear her. When she faced another BAR complaint in 2020, the BAR, in their discipline, actually disclosed the disorder. Below is what the BAR claimed she did wrong and reference to her mental illness.
Problems with the bi-polar came to a head in January 2023. She felt overwhelmed, Leslie told me, and called the BAR to tell them she needed to take leave from the practice.
That phone call triggered a series of events until the police showed up at her door and attempted to Baker Act her. The Baker Act allows for up seventy-two hours to involuntarily commit someone to a psych ward in Florida. Her husband rushed her inside their home, she told me, and demanded a warrant from police before diffusing the situation.
Finally, Leslie said that the big issue is that in Florida the BAR disciplinary process is corrupted.
The American BAR Association commissioned the McKay Report to examine each state’s BAR disciplinary process. The report stated that the BAR cannot discipline itself, because then it is good ole boys club.
That may be why Dori Foster-Morales could be so confident that she could get Leslie disciplined.
I reached out to the Florida BAR but received no response.
Leslie had a hearing earlier this week. That’s below. Her trial is set for June 2023.
Leslie is part of a pattern of whistleblowing attorneys who are retaliated against by the BAR discipline process. Find that article here.
Postscript:
To help me do more Miami-Dade stories: check out the fundraiser.
Share this post